Award-winning Swedish band Deportees have announced their first full UK album release, All Future, out on October 11 and released lead single Covered In Dreams. The trio from Umeå, a remote city in the far north of Sweden, are possibly this most musical of countrys best kept secret. Over five distinctly different albums, Deportees have won plaudits, fans and awards for their constant creativity and reinvention. Their last album, 2015s The Big Sleep was awarded the Swedish Grammy for Best Rock Album, an award the band had also picked up for their previous long-player Islands & Shores.
They managed to cop the ears of French pop royalty Phoenix, who drafted drummer Thomas Hedlund to share his time between the two bands, while guitarist Anders Stenberg was recruited to partner up with Lykke Li as touring band member two fruitful collaborations which have now lasted over 10 years.
And now, not before time, with All Future the UK finally gets its chance to fall in love with Deportees blissfully melancholic sound. Produced by Pontus Winnberg (Miike Snow, Amason), Johannes Berglund (Fever Ray, Ane Brun, The Radio Dept) and Måns Lundberg (Shout Out Louds), All Future picks up from where the EP Re-dreaming from earlier this year left us: in distress over our inability to dream. Amongst lost futures we wander with broken imaginations and look if anywhere at all backwards. The band reveal:
Not even now, when we are certain that the light in the end of tunnel is a train and not paradise, are we capable of imagining other worlds. It truly seems as if we are stuck in time. And it is from this depressing insight that All Future originates. But also, that from a situation where nothing can happen, maybe anything is possible again.
Where The Big Sleep was sad, apocalyptic and gloomy, All Future is if not hopeful at least forward-looking. And the music follows suit. Its wishful, eager and emotionally engaging. The statements are grand, but the settings are always ordinary, personal and relatable. On the single Covered In Dreams we encounter someone that has managed to create a crack in the glass ceiling above us. Lead singer Peder Stenberg explains:
There is a type of person that gets rarer by the day. A useless yet completely vital being that somehow has managed to maintain his or her capability to see beyond the given. This song is about the promise to keep this very someone forever covered in dreams.
Despite its remote location and unwelcoming weather, Umeå has proven to be a perfect pasture for creativity. In the 1990s, its musical trademark was the vegan hardcore punk scene starring bands like Refused. Brothers Peder and Anders Stenberg alongside Thomas Hedlund, young kids back then, were transformed by this vibrant subculture. They discovered the power of music in mosh pits and soon began playing in various hardcore-bands themselves. When the time came to rebel against the rebellion, they named themselves Deportees and drew influences from diverse artists such as Fleetwood Mac, Prince and The Band. And suddenly, everything came together.
Stand by for news of upcoming UK shows.