Park Hotell

The North. It's sports and industries and if you wish to spend your time elsewhere you're commonly viewed as either a fag or a communist - possibly both. As if it was something wrong with that. It's hell on earth.

It's easy to want to get out out there. Somehow. You either get out, physically, or you learn to take shit and play pop music as if your life depended on it. Before you've even gotten that far you've tried to adapt to society and its fucked-up values. You can handle the cold. The winds whistling around your head, literally and metaphorically, don't bother you anymore. You can wait in line for hours. Drink any amount of beers. You can fight. You play your pop music - hard and loud - hoping the volume will make the hecklers throw up.

You get it? There's nothing smart compared to the smart things you find in the universities. That's smart, but only compared to the dumb fucks you face everywhere, on a daily basis. Those who can weld, support hockey teams and feel the need to kill anyone who does something else. And it's hard and it's loud and you're a little erratic, so scared that someone will hit you that you hit them first.

You get looks, you learn your guitar, you learn how to sing and how to deal with it.

After a while you notice that, shit, I'm not alone. There's people who feel the same way. Some like it. They dance where you're playing, hate their life here and feel as hated.

And then it's suddenly, what's the word... Fun. Serious. Fun for real. Some more songs, better and better. The guts to play a ballad. Perhaps one more. But mostly euphoric pop, as loud as it gets: guitars, bass, drums and heavenly vocals, sort of soaring on top. With its obstinate confidence it challenges the idiots to a fight. Or it's miserably in love, trying to get laid, just like everyone else.

This is a geographic phenomenon. Up-north, all over the world, this music is what's there. Hamburg, Manchester, Boston, Sydney. Without the muscles of your average heavy metal, but with speed. Well-adjusted. This is Luleå. This is Park Hotell.

On October 25, 2008, Park Hotell released their debut album "Free For Friends", accompanied by the single "Dead Ringers". The album was produced by Jari Haapalainen (Ed Harcourt, Laakso etc.), featuring him as a drummer and the twin sisters Johanna and Miriam E. Berhan from Taxi! Taxi! as back-up singers.