By Jason Grishkoff | January 16th, 2011
Smoosh together a bit of Foals and a dash of TV on the Radio, then throw in some Ra Ra Riot-esque cellos, and you’ll probably land pretty close to Scandinavia’s When Saints Go Machine. The formula used for their single “Fail Forever,” off the four-piece band’s 5-track EP (also named Fail Forever), instantly caught my attention as worth highlighting as a Song of the Day on Indie Shuffle.
Formed by four childhood friends in Copenhagen, the band has been creating music together since 2007. The manner in which they blend aching lyrics with an up-beat, dance-able indie-pop beat creates a contrast that allows frontman Nikolaj Manuel Vonsild to stand out as a unique, falsetto crooner. Nikolaj’s role is to pen lyrics and melody — for Fail Forever, it appears that his focus was on the observation that people never say what they think. Case and point: you ask someone how they are, they say “I’m fine,” rather than, perhaps, “I’m depressed.”
Crooning aside, I think this band stands to achieve some notoriety if they continue producing sounds like this. If you enjoyed “Fail Forever,” you can fan the band on Facebook by clicking here.