It's been six years since the last album from Last Days of April, and, thankfully, the new record is worth the wait. Even The Good Days Are Bad, out as of Friday on Tapete, reveals new shades of sound from Karl Larsson and co. Elegiac and hopeful at the same time, the music here is really, really good.
The opening title cut has a real sweep about it, like something pitched between The Jayhawks and The Soundtrack of Our Lives, while the more subdued "Run Run Run" purrs atop a nice guitar-lick and an excellent chorus. Karl Larsson seems to have opted for a slightly more mainstream sound this time around, but he's sacrificed none of his goals as a songwriter. Everything here is neatly arranged, and expertly performed.
"Had Enough" eases forward like something from Grant Lee Buffalo, a delicious world-weariness anchoring this one, and it's yet another number that reveals just how good Larsson is at mining multiple emotions at once. In that sense, there's a hint of Neil Young here in his delivery, along with signs of a slight debt owed to later recordings by Mercury Rev. "Alone" goes one further and postively soars. If previous offerings from this group were tinged with sadness, at least this time around Karl is making his laments singalongs, you know?
Even The Good Days Are Bad is the sort of release that will appeal to those who like bands as disparate as Teenage Fanclub, The War on Drugs, and Fruit Bats. That said, there's a lot here that makes this distinctive, and, thankfully, the hooks are awfully strong on this 2021 set. I hope that more and more people get hip to this band now. This record proves how much they deserve it.
Even The Good Days Are Bad is out now via Tapete.
More details on Last Days of April via the band's official Facebook page.
[Photo: Johan Unden]