Velvet Insane Produces Rock Music as Fun as the Band's Name
The Swedish glam rockers are set to release an album that will have listeners clapping and singing along.
Welcome to another edition of Michael’s Record Collection and thank you for spending part of your day with me. Speaking of thanks, I want to make sure that I give a very special thank you to the first ever MRC patron, David Rohe. If you’d like to join David in supporting this newsletter, along with the accompanying MRC YouTube channel and podcast, you can sign up at the level that works best for you at patreon.com/michaelsrecordcollection.
This week, I hope to turn you on to some new music out of Sweden. If you took glam rock and power pop and threw it in a blender, you might get what Velvet Insane put down on the trio’s upcoming album, Rock ‘N’ Roll Glitter Suit. I spoke with founder and guitarist Jesper Lindgren about the album and his background and influences. I hope you enjoy the review and search out the album. Right now there are a couple of tracks from the new album available on streaming services. If you like them, you’ll like the entire thing. Please note that the new album sounds nothing like the band’s debut, so if you give that a spin and aren’t sold, don’t write off Rock ‘N’ Roll Glitter Suit.
I was only a few minutes into the first track when the smile spread across my face and didn’t leave until all 11 songs had come and gone. Swedish trio Velvet Insane’s new release, Rock ‘N’ Roll Glitter Suit, which comes out July 16 on Sound Pollution Records, was just another set of promotional tracks from a band I’d never heard of, and I had no expectations going in. So it was a genuine delight and surprise when something hit my ears that — on first listen — sounded like Badfinger and The Knack had a lovechild.
As I listened more, additional influences crystalized. Here was Mott the Hoople or Ian Hunter. There was Sweet. This riff sounds like Kiss, while that chorus sounds like the Bay City Rollers. Here’s an old Rod Stewart-sounding bit. There’s some Beatles in here. The album was filled with infectious hooks, memorable choruses, and...well, fun.
“We wanted to capture 1973 and the glam rock era,” Velvet Insane founder and guitarist Jesper Lindgren said. “We wanted to make like a modern sound to it.”
Even the band’s name screams glam rock. Lindgren said there is no real meaning behind Velvet Insane’s name. The trio of Lindgren, Ludvig Andersson (bass), and Jonas Eriksson (drums, vocals) just like the sound of it.
“We wanted to just start a band that had the name that could be out from the 70s,” Lindgren said.
After releasing a self-titled debut album in February of 2019 — which sounded like modern hard rock — the band was ready to make the kind of music that mattered to them.
“We sat down with our producer, Sulo Karlsson from the (Swedish glam rock band) Diamond Dogs, and we started to talk about this album that we wanted to make,” Lindgren said. “We have always seen ourselves as a glam rock band. And we had tried different ways to get to that.”
With Karlsson’s help, the band did just that. The songs on the new album sound like someone put glam rock and power pop in a blender and came out with a new concoction that features the best aspects of both, yet still somehow manages to sound like an album made today. The music is infused with the influences of Canadian glam rockers The Kings, The Knack, Badfinger, Mott the Hoople, Sweet, Slade, the New York Dolls, the Beatles, and the Bay City Rollers. There’s even more than an occasional hint of Lindgren’s all-time favorite band, KISS. All 11 songs are under four-and-a-half minutes long, and they’re infused with a strong sense of melody.
“Driving Down the Mountain” kicks off the album and you know you’re in for a ride because the song literally starts with the sound of a car starting. Lindgren said the band had always wanted to add the car sound from early on in the process. It’s catchy and sounds both fresh and familiar at the same time and it’s the song that had me smiling right off the bat.
I asked Lindgren how the band managed to write so many catchy and memorable choruses.
“We wanted to keep it simple. I think that's the key,” he said.
One of the album’s highlights is the first single, “Backstreet Liberace.” Much like Velvet Insane’s name, the title doesn’t mean anything, according to Lindgren. It’s one of the hand-clappingest songs on the record and it’s got a great guitar solo.
“We really wanted it to be 100% glam rock,” Lindgren said of the song. “And the title sounded nice.”
The album rolls on through another uptempo song in “Jaded Eyes,” with excellent Sweet-esque harmony vocals and another singalong chorus, before hitting another of the true highlights in “Velvet Tongue,” which Lindgren said the band wanted to be the second single, but the label had other thoughts.
“Velvet Tongue is a favorite of mine,” he said. “It’s got a lot of Abba in it. Got a lot of pop and it's got a lot of glam rock and it's 100% glitter and swagger.”
The most recent single, as determined by the label, is the slower song “Sound of Sirens.” It has lovely backing vocals and goes a bit further back in time in terms of the band’s influences.
“We wanted to show another side of Velvet Insane,” Lindgren said of the track. “We wanted to show our 60s influences. We really love the Beatles and Elton John and Van Morrison and all those kinds of pop stuff.
“Riding the Skyways” kicks the album back into a more upbeat direction and is another one that’ll have concert goers clapping along. Then comes another of my favorites from the album in “Spin on Crazy Moon,” which has an opening riff that sounds to me like Ace Frehley from an early Kiss album and a simple, yet memorable chorus.
“I wrote that guitar (riff) at home and we started to jam on it and play along and we came up with a chorus,” Lindgren said. “And it sounded like the Who, that’s where the name came from — like, Keith Moon. It’s got a lot of 60s in it.”
“Sailing on a Thunderstorm” starts with a nice acoustic guitar and mandolin intro, and it’s the band’s tribute to old Rod Stewart songs.
“Of course we have listened to Rod Stewart and “Maggie Mae.” That's why we have added the, mandolin part,” he said.
The slower, acoustic number “Midnight Sunshine Serenade” gives way into another of the peaks of the album. “Space Age DJ” is not only another uptempo glam rocker, but it also serves as a lyrical roadmap to the band’s influences — notably Mott the Hoople, Slade, and Sweet. It’s hard to believe Ian Hunter didn’t write it because it mimics his style perfectly.
“I think it was one of the first songs that we added to this album, because we wanted one song that defined everything — to find the sound that we wanted to create,” Lindgren said. “It’s got a lot of New York Dolls in it and it’s uptempo and it’s got that crazy saxophone. I’m really looking forward to playing that live. It’s got a lot of energy and it's fun and it's a tribute to our heroes.”
The last track, “You’re the Revolution” is a little different and sounds to me like it was influenced by Oasis, but Lindgren said it was Beatles influenced, which certainly explains it.
“We just want to have a noisy ballad that ended up with a great guitar solo,” Lindgren said.
Mission accomplished.
Rock ‘N’ Roll Glitter Suit is a fun album. It’s not the kind of music many bands are making today, and as Lindgren is just 26 years old, it’s not really music from his youth. He first fell in love with a cassette tape that had belonged to his mother. It was the Kiss compilation Double Platinum.
“The first song I heard was ‘Strutter’ — the 1978 kind of a little more disco version of the song and I really loved it, and I just got blown away about it,” Lindgren said.
Now, instead of listening to guys who wear makeup, Lindgren and his bandmates are making the music and wearing it themselves. It’s one of my favorite discoveries of 2021, and I hope you’ll give it a chance.
Here’s my full interview with Jesper Lindgren. He was out taking a walk during our chat, and you may hear some of his crunching footsteps in the background at times, but because of that I didn’t get him on screen, so the static image will have to suffice.
Music Documentaries That Are Worth Your Time
I tend to watch a lot of documentaries about music. Whether it’s the making of an album, the history of a band (“the inside story”), or the biography of a specific musician, I find the stories behind music compelling. I’ve recently seen a few I can recommend.
David Bowie: The Last Five Years (HBO) — Sad in tone, because you’re told up front that this is about the last five years of Bowie’s life, this film provides a good overview of his final projects and some of the things he wanted to do had he not passed away. Bowie was an artist in every sense of the word and that comes through clearly in this documentary.
Biography: Kenny Rogers (A&E) — This film covers the entire career span of the country legend, who sprang from a country/folk/rock outfit best known for a psychedelic pop single. He won over the country crowd and then crossed back over into pop stardom. There are a lot of great stories about Rogers and his influence from other musicians with performance footage — much of it from his farewell concert.
Tear the Roof Off: The Untold Story of Parliament (Amazon Prime) — If you like your rockumentaries filled with salacious details, this is the one for you. George Clinton started his musical career as a teenager in a doo wop group in New Jersey. He built an entire funk culture, and then basically screwed over every musician who helped him get there.
Lonestar: Stevie Ray Vaughn 1984-1989 (Amazon Prime) — The rise of the Texas blues guitar hero, his fall due to addiction, and his rehabilitation and rebirth are chronicled here. It all ended tragically, just as his career and personal life were reaching new heights. This film covers all of that and the aftermath of Vaughn’s life.
Biography: KISStory (A&E) — There are some interesting rare film clips that even longtime Kiss fans won’t have seen in this recently aired two-part documentary. Much of the story content isn’t new, even if some of the footage and sound is. The documentary chronicles the band’s beginnings, success, decline, and resurgence, but is focused on Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons, as Peter Criss and Ace Frehley declined to participate. Anyone who has read the four original KISS members’ autobiographies has heard the stories before and can imagine the rebuttal you’d get from Criss and Frehley if they were involved, but A&E did a nice job of piecing some of that together from old interviews. This is a worthwhile watch for Kiss fans.
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