I know I'm stating a cliché as big as Giuliano Ferrara, but friendship mixed with respect is perhaps the only feeling we must experience in life as it has no side effects. Then again, one doesn't choose which feelings to experience; usually, the feelings choose him.

Håkan Hellström is a Swedish singer-songwriter of moderate success in his native country, practically none outside of it, he took his first steps in Gothenburg to which he owes his first musical success "Känn Ingen Sorg För Mig, Göteborg" ("Don't Feel Sorry for Me, Gothenburg"), a melodic rock-pop minstrel who paved his way through the ice and long summer days of Northern Europe. Daniel Gilbert is also a Swedish musician, founder, among others, of Broder Daniel, on a similar level of success to his childhood and lifelong friend Hellström; such friends that in 2005 they released "Ett Kolikbarns Bekännelser" (literally "Confessions of a Colicky Child") in which the two play together, in an album of honest Scandinavian folk-rock.

In "Hurricane Gilbert", in sixth position, Hellström takes the name of a well-known environmental disaster in Cape Verde in the late '80s and gives to that companion of his, a companion that the luckiest can have, the privilege of singing as soon as they find inspiration for one of the best pieces of their career. Beautiful music that I’ve written, to whom do I dedicate it? This one left me, this one I left, I have already written a couple of songs to my dad that the public will never understand because the majority of them are sheep, so I dedicate this to the one with whom I shared travels, dreams, stories, photos, and quarrels in school together.

I was there when you were in love and you were, are, there for me, it hurt me to see you far away and without that underlying melancholy that makes people interesting, but it did me good to see you return and I’d drown your sorrows in a Long Island holding them down with my hands until they stop breathing, little does it matter if my hands end up sticky. The song has a sense of the eternal stuck in the Swedish snow, of that Sweden you know much better than I, a cold breath that cannot cool a bond to which you owe much of who you are.

"Everyone talks about you, Hurricane" and I will talk about it forever, about London, the cold of Amsterdam, Budapest, the sea of Sicily and especially the waves of Valencia. Hurricane, hurricane, everywhere a hurricane. Time that passes and doesn't return, the "golden years of the great Real" have gone for everyone, and ours, those of the great Barcelona, are ending, "Hurricane Gilbert" may mean nothing to most but says everything to those who listen at the right moment. Like everything, here’s another cliché. How can they believe in eternal love, how can they believe it now in the middle of the hurricane, you are a support in front of a mirror, a slice of life, and they’ll really believe that I will be here to see the seasons pass one more day until, maybe, who knows, the end of this comes?

"Hurricane Gilbert" ends by taking your hand and Håkan Hellström unknowingly writes the strongest page of his career, earning a place in the discography of those who have a heart that for a moment overlooks the riffs and solos, the nods to the progressive fathers, the angry punk chants, the fucks, the spits, and the profane poetics of the Garage, the acid trips of the psychedelics and the wide basements protected by metal nets of the New Wave, it overlooks the rawness of the 70s and the dreams of the 60s, the pointless neurosis of the 90s and the desire to expose the malaise of the 80s, overlooks everything, remains the heart.

Ah, then there's the rest of the album: it sucks.

Tracklist and Videos

01   Jag har varit i alla städer (05:50)

02   Brännö serenad (03:18)

03   En midsommarnattsdröm (03:47)

04   Dom kommer kliva på dig igen (03:46)

05   Bara dårar rusar in (02:29)

06   Hurricane Gilbert (06:22)

07   Gårdakvarnar och skit (05:30)

08   Magasingatan (06:28)

09   Vaggvisa för flyktbenägna (22:15)

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