Today's Song of the Day, as chosen by John Richards, host of The Morning Show on KEXP, is "This Time" by Makthaverskan, from the 2021 album För Allting on Run For Cover.
Makthaverskan don’t sound at all like they belong in this era. Heavily inspired by mid-'80s post-punk and baroque pop, they sound like they should be a Factory Records-signee alongside Joy Division rather than their (albeit great) home of Run For Cover. Even the slight crackle in their recordings make them sound like a long-lost cassette import your cousin sent you when they went to Sweden for the summer.
But, indeed, the Gothenburg-based band is completely of this time and on the verge of releasing their fourth studio album and first since 2017’s III. Titled För Allting, the album was recorded with HOLY’s Hannes Ferm and will be out on November 12th via Run For Cover. Our Song of the Day is the record’s lead single “This Time” that soars in the band’s typical theatrical fashion, with frontwoman Maja Milner’s voice going to Kate Bushian lengths to convey, well, something important. “It won’t matter/ This time, it’s too late/ This time, it won’t matter.”
While the song sounds squarely within the wheelhouse of Makthaverskan’s previously melodramatic dream pop, the band says the recording process for the new album was a very new direction for them.
“When we started the songwriting process for this album, I think we all were pretty determined to take the music in a new direction. Not necessarily that we would sound ‘different,’ but to work on the songs using somewhat different methods than before. For our previous albums, we wrote the songs in our rehearsal space and pretty much recorded them the way they were. For this album, we intended the songs to be finalized in the studio and left some more room to work with.”
