The title Introducing... adorned the first Beatles album available in the U.S., released on Vee-Jay Records nearly a year before the better-known material recently repackaged as The Capitol Years, Vol. 1. When most Americans finally "met" the Beatles' following their February 1964 *"*Ed Sullivan Show" appearance, four distinct personalities emerged (and have stuck ever since): cute one, smart one, quiet one, and Ringo. While no one's predicting a similar cultural impact for Hello Saferide's long-overdue stateside arrival, the Swedish indie pop artist's Introducing... is in its own way just as effective at introducing a unique and consummately charming personality.
Like people, the best songs "have a face," country songwriter Cindy Walker used to say. As a vinyl-only U.S. reissue by webzine/label/mail-order It's a Trap!, Introducing... shows us Hello Saferide's face in full 12" clarity: Annika Norlin, who sings and writes the songs, has a tall forehead and unguarded gaze, her lips parted in a half smile or the start of a question as she fidgets with her cardigan. Over 13 short songs built on simple college-troubadour acoustic guitar (including U.S. bonus track "The Quiz"), a character emerges who is at once tender, witty, self-aware, insecure, and occasionally hedonistic. Most of all, in an indie scene that all too often equates incoherence with brilliance, Norlin's protagonist feels unmistakably real.
Though I have only just been introduced to Hello Saferide's music, I feel like I already know the person in her songs. Many of you might, too. She's "the kind that sees the sun and brings an umbrella" and worries as much about the risk a boyfriend will listen to "symphony rock" as she does about the chance he'll sleep around. She visits fortunetellers, hates Jedi and hobbits, regrets drinking to excess but does it anyway, and lies awake at night, Boy Least Likely To-like, fretting over non-existent spiders. She approves of Merle Haggard, Kate Bush, "Townes and Jens," Spiderman comics, and "Seinfeld" but not T-shirts depicting the cast of 1980s soap "Falcon Crest" except when she's really lonely. She might let you take her home-- "no awkard breakfasts, I swear"-- only to fall fast asleep. She likes a boyfriend who puts out when she come homes drunk.
That's the album, but each Hello Saferide song has a face worth remembering, too. The one you'll spend giddy moments with first is probably "Highschool Stalker", with its carefree handclaps, whoa-oh-ohs, mariachi trumpet, and too-detailed reminiscences of looking up a crush's name on Altavista and Yahoo! (the ubiquitous Google's absence here is as satisfying as it is creepily historically accurate). Equally upbeat songs like "San Francisco" and "My Best Friend" imagine "the only place in North America not destroyed by the government" and Norlin's practical wish that she were lesbian, respectively-- "No men ever really dance like this," Norlin explains. Deceptively peppy, trumpet-led "If I Don't Write This Song, Someone I Love Will Die" girds itself with superstitions befitting its title.
The quiet songs, like quiet people, take a little longer to get to know. But they're just as rewarding-- if only shy acquaintances came with lyric sheets! Reissue bonus track "The Quiz", from 2006's Would you let me play this EP 10 times a day? EP, plays new-relationship 20 questions before popping the big one: "If I'd fall, would you pick me up?" I start to melt every time. "Long Lost Penpal", with electronic programming and a guest appearance from fellow Swedish indie-popster Firefox AK's Andrea Kellerman, feints toward bathetic cliché-- e.g., my penpal stopped me from killing myself!-- before a surprise twist befitting the Internet era: one letter writer was actually a 46-year-old man named Luke with three kids and an uncaring wife (but how'd he manage to fake a teenage girl's handwriting?). On "I Thought You Said Summer Is Going to Take the Pain Away", Norlin wonders why a sweetheart isn't with her doing crossword puzzles, while by spare, rain-soaked "I Don't Sleep Well" everything is actually pretty great-- which is, of course, absolutely terrifying.
A few people might find Hello Saferide, like the best of Norlin's current Swedish contemporaries, too cute for comfort. If such cynics would rather hang out with assholes and imbeciles, well, let them. In the mold of Jonathan Richman circa The Modern Lovers or Rockin' and Romance, Norlin is a gifted anti-punk. Her lyrics tend to invite even more pangs of embarrassment than Richman's: "I don't feel fat anymore/ And I don't count my blackheads as a hobby," or "Do you still keep pictures of old girlfriends/ Are they prettier than me?", or "You're the cutest thing I've ever seen-- like a teddy bear on heroin."
A recent New York Times article on state-sponsored indie rock hinted that some Scandinavian bands merely imitate U.S. culture, but it's difficult to imagine an American acoustic singer/songwriter so unironically addressing the psyche of awkward, lovesick, body-conscious 20-somethings without getting entangled in sex/class politics, soft-rock fluff, or worse. Hello Saferide, by contrast, just sings about being a person-- and an endearing one, at that. It's a pleasure to finally meet her.
