Photo: Jonas Börjesson
A lot of bands get stick for having dull, unimaginative names, and when you have to shift through songs from 4000 bands all called something like ‘The Sticks’ or ‘White Walls’ (I have googled both of these ‘generic band name examples’ to make sure they don’t belong to any actual bands, as I enjoy not getting sued), it’s easy to see why. However, it’s also easy to see why bands make safe, boring name choices when you come across a band name like Stockholm group Steve Buscemi’s Dreamy Eyes. Steve Buscemi’s Dreamy Eyes is not a good band name, because it makes you imagine intimate eye contact with Steve Buscemi, and that’s a very unpleasant mental image that you should probably not want associated with your band. But you shouldn’t dismiss this band because of their name, because Steve Buscemi’s Dreamy Eyes (shudder) are really, very good.
The band’s new single, ‘Call Out’, is its own atmospheric dreamworld, a song that slowly wraps around you and drags you in. It establishes its rhythmic ground with a rolling drum thud and a sparse guitar riff, before the synths pop in and open up a sense of space and air in the song. Voclists Siri Sjöberg and Tilde Hansen reache out into that space, spinning a story of repetition of rejection, before the band cranks up the power and drives into a fizzing, swirling outro. This is dream-indie at its best, floating and psychedelic but focused enough to avoid drifting into vagueness. Just maybe try not to think too much about the name. ‘Call Out’ is out now.
