Kent
Verkligen

THE REVIEW

The Kent band started as one of many Indie groups eager to make noise in garages, with four inexperienced musicians from Eskilstuna (Sweden) who one day in 1993 decided that Stockholm was a more frequented port, a more exposed showcase, and so they moved there to find a launching pad.

Joakim Berg, Martin Sköld, Markus Mustonen, and Sami Sirviö, the latter Finnish, made a blood pact; they are a team willing to put everything they have on the line to become not just a prominent band, but one of the best things Sweden can offer musically. At first listen, it might not seem they have much to differentiate them from half a million other groups of kids with minimal talent for playing guitars and little else. The debut album "Kent" (1995) is so different from everything subsequently produced that it is difficult to relate it to them, starting from the cover, the font used, the image, the graphic style, and the prematurely strong musical content. Only by slightly straining the ear beyond the walls of sound could one notice that behind those unripe strokes of the pick lies a big soul, majestic and tragic: this "Verkligen" follows the debut album exactly one year later, released in 1996 to ride the wave of good reviews received thanks to the previous album and starts something, something important (at least for Scandinavia).

The true Kent begins here. The opener with "Avtryck", the punky "10 Minuter (För Mig Själv)", the singles "Kräm" and "Halka", though enjoyable and with a fresh sound, don't manage to detach the band's image much from what was created just a year before, that is a good Indie Rock product without too many pretensions. But it is by listening to the third and final single that one glimpses the greatness to come: "Gravitation" is the first taste of a splendidly sad future, the first real anthem to melancholy, an example of that torn music Kent will make their flagship, Joakim Berg starts exposing his troubled ego by throwing stones at his own soul. "Like a perfect and beautiful law, perfect and indestructible, like me". Berg, in fact, starting here will be hit by countless self-inflicted stabs but each of these will be sung, more and more, and better each time, Berg who writes everything and colors it with the dark and cold tones of his beloved land. "Istället För Ljud" is another sign of the evolution in progress, calm and quiet in the verses and tempestuous in the choruses, making it clear that so far they have been joking but let's see what they can pull out as soon as they grow up a little. A great desire to come out of the shell, kids who want to be big, not even a century between the four, a desire for the infinite: "En Timme en Minut" with a bit more experience would have been a masterpiece, it remains a great unfinished piece with over five minutes of instrumentals filled with rough and harsh guitar overdubs. "Vi Kan Väl Vänta Tills Imorgon" is instead the first attempt to close the album in a certain way, a way that Kent have (almost) always understood perfectly, the last track must have something epic to scream, something that scratches your soul and stays planted in your mind, and here they try with that still youthful way, succeeded only halfway. For now.

This is the first real drop in a vase that fortunately today, in 2011, is far from being full: Kent will soon move past the Indie phase of these beginnings to first approach a radio-friendly and brainy Alt-Rock enough to be nicknamed "the Swedish Radiohead" (1997-2002), then a dark and torn period of Adult Rock (2005-2006) and finally they will put guitars in the background to embrace electronics (2007-present), a full and continuous evolution, with nostalgic beauty as the glue for everything. "Like a perfect and beautiful law", precisely.