What is it about hip Swedes with english accents?  Moneybrother released Real Control in 2009 and has been touring the US, a show you should have caught.  I did, at the Jefferson Theatre in Charlottesville. Great room, but being taken unawares by Anders Wendin blew it away.  This man is a huge star.  I bought an album from him after the well received set.  Lanky, handsome, real, and a showman.  Against Me! fleshed out the evening with their continued de-identification implosion tour but Moneybrother was the revelation. Later I looked up the band and found out about Monster and the earlier Moneybrother albums.

Real Control seems to be the first release entirely in english.  Anders sings in native Swedish and German too.  Then I had the chance to listen to the album.  Then again, and again.  This is a very good album. The best of punk, rock, Frankie goes to hollywood and ABBA and Violent Femmes and on and on, with a voice like Joe Strummer, if he had had range.  A lovingly crafted album, a sonic psycho-emotional journey far more effective than prozac.  Great to dance to, to make love to, to party to, to stage a resistance to.

Enjoy.

The album makes me mad, happy, sad smiling, dancing… it is a real gift.

So give the brother some money.

Bragging rights claimed by: Lou Wright  ’Sup  (though you had the kewl kids on the lower east side which has not been the cool place for twenty years, and Moneybrother ain’t even playing NYC - catch em at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park)