The Radio Dept. Clinging to a Scheme

• Domestic Scene
• Heaven's on Fire
• This Time Around
• Never Follow Suit
• A Token of Gratitude
• The Video Dept.
• Memory Loss
• David
• Four Months in the Shade
• You Stopped Making Sense

Mainstays of the Swedish indie label, Labrador, The Radio Dept. follow up their 2006 album, Pet Grief, with another set of songs that mine blurry, shoegaze atmospherics, and stuttering, new wave inspired synth-pop. The band's audience grew exponentially with the inclusion of three of their songs in Sofia Coppola's film, Marie Antoinette, but their sound seems more at home in 2010, where increasingly innumerable "glo-fi" and "chill wave" bands are running crackling textures over melancholic remembrances. However, Clinging to a Scheme also incorporates more political lyrics, a response to Sweden's election of a conservative Prime Minister, Frederik Reinfeldt, adding another dimension to their sonic excursions.   

Abstract by Tyler Parks