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Brynn joins us this week from Click It Ticket and Musicology 101 to give us her take on the new Miike Snow album.

As someone who goes through a lot of music, discarding much of it after a listen or two, it’s always a pleasure when a new album passes the two-week test and in fact is still in the shuffle several months later. It’s even better when said album comes from a band in which I had little to no previous interest, and then suddenly they bring out some new material that makes everything click into place. This happened to me with Beirut, and it has happened again with Miike Snow, thanks to their new album Happy to You.

I’m not sure what it was about the first Miike Snow album, but it just didn’t grab me. I liked the idea of a Swedish indie band in theory, but somehow in practice it wasn’t enough. I listened to the album a couple of times and then put it away as it failed to gain momentum for me. When Happy to You came out earlier this year, I didn’t think too much about it, but then a friend urged me to give them a second try, and I was glad I did, on several levels.

Firstly, it’s just a great collection of songs. The writing is spectacular, in terms of both music and lyrics. But I think what hooked me was the implementation – a mixture of IDM and post-pop with elements of electroclash is pretty much heaven for me, and I can listen to the album on repeat for hours and never get tired of it. The remixes on the deluxe edition are a nice bonus, as well.

What’s most interesting, though, is how Happy to You made me go back and revisit the first eponymous album, this time with a different set of ears. This time I was listening for something else, I had a clue to the puzzle that I didn’t have before, and it helped immensely. I still wouldn’t say I like the first album as much as the second, but I’m certainly able to listen to it now and appreciate where the band was going, and where the roots of their sound came from. If they ever come out with a third album (fingers crossed), I’ll be the first one in line to get it, and no doubt it will be a surprise all over again.