Album Review

The Sound of Arrows – Voyage

• 8th Nov 2011

The Swedes strike again, this time with a duo making electronic pop that takes the club anthem to another level – as with most things Scandi (it seems), The Sound of Arrows’ debut album ‘Voyage’ contains enough style and substance to lift it above the ordinary.

Listening to this album is like watching Japanese anime – with space-like synths that pop and whoosh, simplified emotive lyrics and contributions from choirs of children, it’s almost sickly sweet. You know you should probably be committing yourself to something a little more grown-up. But ‘Voyage’ is infused with an intelligence and warmth that makes you want to keep listening.

The duo say they are inspired by Vangelis, and there’s definitely something Blade Runner-like about the feel and scope of this album, taking small human emotions and blowing them up to a universal scale – the sound swells, the beat booms, vocals soar and we’re taken on a bit of a cosmic ride.

The Sound of Arrows comprises musician Stefan Storm and filmmaker Oskar Gullstrand, and the two have been building a YouTube following with their feature-quality music clips – the film for their single ‘Magic’ has notched up 1.5 million viewers. Their latest release, the film for ‘Wonders’, is out today [link].

So the duo’s fans will have a fair idea of what to expect from this album. And they won’t be disappointed. It’s a well-produced, well-developed collection of songs, and is a little like a concept album – Storm describes it as “like a pop-soundtrack to an imaginary film”, which is exactly how it feels.

‘Voyage’ is a little nostalgic and more than a little camp, reminiscent of eighties pop and consciously recalling French disco. The duo have painstakingly crafted it to the point of over-production. Combined with the films, The Sound of Arrows have created something grandiose, naively optimistic and unashamedly impassioned. But you might find you can’t help but like it anyway.