Beautifully set beneath the majestic northern lights in the windswept Swedish mountains, deep within the arctic woods, lies the small town of Föllinge. One of the few hundred people calling this placid but enchanting place home is Jonas Jonsson. Under his moniker Bedroom Eyes he dresses up in a slender white suit, armed with songs that aim to be vivid and short compounds of bright melodies and heartfelt matters. Wrapping his exploding indie pop with unrequested love, wishful thinking, unwavering trust in infinite possibilities, wrong roads taken, blissful hopes and a constantly present longing to belong.
Bedroom Eyes debut album was released back in 2010 on A West Side Fabrication. An album that was recorded under supervision of engineer Herman Söderström (The Cardigans, Hello Saferide) in all-analogue studio Ocean Sound Recordings, built inside a small boat house on the sandy Atlantic shores of the tiny Norwegian island Giske. There simply can not have been a more fitting way to have recorded this debut album than out looking the Atlantic Ocean with charming people in sundresses and 60’s shades zooming by the studio’s big glass wall on bicycles. Families and young lovers frolicking and laughing in the ocean water just a few feet away from these brave little songs getting stuck on tape alongside the soft sounds of seagulls tweeting and the North Sea waves trying to kiss the studio wall.
On New Year’s Eve more than two years ago, shoveling snow outside a mountain cabin, Bedroom Eyes decided that the time was right to start recording this debut album. To be able to pay the studio bills he hasn’t bought one single item since then – not even clothes, hair cuts or news papers.
Releasing two demo-EPs for free online download stirred up a massive internet hype (more than 150.000 downloads of the underground hit “Motorcycle Daydream”, during the first month, alone) and numerous large music magazines and newspapers such as Rolling Stone Magazine and Der Spiegel gave the EPs raving reviews. This publicity boom gave the demo songs airplay on radio stations in more than twenty countries worldwide.
A five-piece backing band joins the euphoric live shows, crediting amongst a number of Scandinavian festival performances a critically praised appearance at Norway’s biggest festival Quart.
Sweden has spawned heaps of loud garage rock bands fronted by bigmouthed lead singers and here is the complete opposite. Instead of a black leather jacket and ludicrous attitude – a white suit and an honest intent.
This is pop music from the heart – to the feet.