Superfamily
Gig Seeker Pro

Superfamily

| INDIE

| INDIE
Band Rock Pop

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"Pitchfork note from Oyafestival 2007"

Stephen M. Deusner

The great thing about festivals is that there are always discoveries. Entering the grounds this afternoon, I passed by the Enga stage shortly after Superfamily had started. First band of the day, but they played like headliners. They also had the best stage accessory of the day: Two guys in matching suits doing matching dance moves and generally hamming it up. They were the Hives to singer Steven Wilson's Bono, an unapologetic cheeseball who looks like he's having the time of his life on stage. He introduces one song by saying it's about the time he injured his knee when he was a 30-year-old male prostitute in Paris during the 60s, and his own personal Pips unfurl French flags at the song's climax. - Pitchfork


"SUPERFAMILY"

Norway’s Superfamily have created something potent and undeniably special with their second full-length Warszawa. Cribbing the best from rock acts of years past (and usually improving on them), it’s easy to feel, upon listening to the record, like this is what everything’s been building up to. This is the grand scope The Killers were going for. It’s the perfect concoction of space age hyper drama that Muse just nearly missed last year, and it's what U2 would sound like if they truly were the gods that everyone makes them out to be.

A bizarre concept album about love, loss and time machines, it feels very much like a product of the seventies, even though the synth-heavy music is clearly inspired primarily by the eighties. Despite all of its heady ruminations, though, the album boasts eight huge, instant, singalong pop songs. “I Could Be A Real Winner” and “The Radio Has Expressed Concerns About What You Did Last Night” are already deserved hits in the band’s home country. Each possesses the kind of melody that feels like a lost classic upon the first listen, yet in no way seems derivative or uninventive. The title track, with its majestic, symphonic synth work could just end up being the sweeping, lovelorn throwback of the year. Most instantly impressive, though, is “Teens Of The 70’s”, a wild mash-up of rock opera, stabbing dance and punk attitude, propelled by yelping front man Steven Wilson. If you’re not involved in the record yet, from this point on it’ll sweep you up in its spacey fantasia. Put simply, the track redefines the term “epic.”

Warszawa is, if not the best, at least one of the best things you’re going to hear all year. It’s just in a completely different league than most everything out there right now. It’s the kind of album that redefines things, sets a new standard. Undoubtedly, a staggering achievement, and it goes without saying, a must-own. - independentclauses.com


"Superfamily - Warszawa"

Superfamily – Warszawa (Propeller)
Norway's Superfamily are undoubtedly a talented and entertaining group. Their live shows are said to be amongst the best evenings one could spend out, a feat that is hard not to sense from the tracks on "Warszawa" (and the fact that they have a backing vocals and dancing troupe accompanying them during live performances doesn't hurt). Superfamily are somehow able to capture the emotional response one has to the 'festival music' feel of Håkan Hellström's early recordings, combining it with the arena-rock approach of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, the 80s pop craft of Billy Joel, the dreamlike style of David Bowie, and the unrestrained leanings of a group like Arcade Fire. It's hard to pin down a definite feel to the music, "Warszawa" (also the name of a David Bowie song) revels in its 80s epic sound, "I could be a real winner", my personal favorite, reminds me of the anthemic Britpop songs that filtered through pub speakers in the mid 90s, and closer "The suffering" is more aligned with the approach of Superfamily's colleagues in Scandinavia. "Warszawa" is easily one of the most surprising records that has fallen into my hands this year, and one of the best.
- Lars Garvey Laing-Peterson - It's a Trap


"Superfamily`s Warszawa"

Norway’s contribution to high-pitched engulfing pop is called Superfamily. Their second album Warszawa is due to be released on May 21. -Followed by a grand release party at Oslo’s Park Theatre Venue.
And grand extravaganza is this band’s insignia; their live shows tend to manifest as Les Miserables: smoke-ridden banner waving events with lots of noise and screaming and more than ample pathos. The thing is, they do this convincingly, for they have the music to match it. Their songs are layer cakes of synthesiser sheets, throbbing rhythm and screeching vocals, which broadcast the pointy melodies the way a storm would play on a comb.
Superfamily started out as a band with a clearly defined set of parameters. They knew what they wanted, and not least what they didn’t want. One of those things was jamming an exploring in de facto con-cert. For a while they seemed to fall short of their own formula. Despite their semi-intoxicating appearance, the songs did not prove up to standard, or so a least was the critical verdict upon the release of their first EP Champagne in 2003. Their long play debut come shortly afterwards and it had songs on it that were recognized as something special and which won lots of radio play. Live the band was streamlining their act, pumping up the volume and winning more and more fans. Not least as a result of the fervent frequency of shows. Still, the album itself, “Back to Paris” never really made it out of the margins and Superfamily was becoming a band that was bigger and more renowned than their recorded music seemed to vouch for.

But now the whole family have packed their enormous Winnebago and achieved a level of momentum that seems heard to stop. The preparations for their second album-release bear the traits of a big and thorough effort, with a superfluity of Superfamiliar things in pop cultural orbit and bags of buzz in ether and streets.
Bearing the title “Warszawa” the album, out on Propeller recordings, will be released on May 21st. Three days later a release party is scheduled and it is portrayed as a festival unto itself. But again they have the right to some pathos, for there is no denying that expectations for this party have already hit the ceiling. -As has those for the record, since some of the tracks have had record-long A-rotation on the radio.

So if you’re one for the high tones, and enjoy being engulfed in some very persistent music –for this is no inner-worldly or sylvan expression- Superfamily might be just your next favourite band. - MIC by Christian Lysvaag


Discography

Champagne EP - 2004 / Back In Paris - 2005 / Warszawa - 2007

More songs available on
www.myspace.com/superfamilynorway
www.reverbnation.com/superfamily

Photos

Bio

((( NEWS UPDATES )))

February 2008:
- Winner of Norwegian Grammy (Spellemann): Popband of the Year.

October 2007:
- Alarm Awarded: best live act 2007
- Alarm Awarded: song of the year ("The Radio..." - the most played song on Norwegian radio in 2007)

SUPERFAMILY

From the impaled sheep heads of black-metal legends Mayhem to the slightly less theatrical antics of the mighty Turbonegro, there's no debating that bands from Norway know how to put on a live show: Superfamily hail from the town Moss, just outside of Oslo and are no different from their fellow countrymen in their commitment to spectacular live performances. Musically however, they offer something entirely different.

Superfamily's lead vocals are man-handled by Steven Wilson, Kim Granholt is on keyboards; Martin Steffensen does guitar & backing vocals, Tommy Christensen - drums, Hasse Rosbach - bass, Anders Nielsen - backing vocals & dancing, Terje Krumins - backing vocals & dancing and Håkon Moe - backing vocals & dancing.

The title of their second and current album 'Warszawa' was previously a song name of David Bowie's from which Joy Division's original incarnation Warsaw took their name. The icy cold synths of opening track 'In the Night' hint at Bowie's 'Low' or JD's 'Closer', yet the chorus is worthy of the rather less cool bands Simple Minds or Ultravox. Whilst instant credibility and perhaps common sense would dictate that we focus on the innovative production rather than the poppier elements throughout 'Warszawa', there's still no denying that 'I Could Be a Winner' sounds like it belongs on the closing credits of an 80s John Hughes movie, where the popular guy dumps the beauty queen for the screwed-up girl who he then takes to the prom.

The first singe from 'Warszawa' in Norway was 'The Radio Has Expressed Concerns About What You Did Last Night', where it is practically an anthem. If there's any justice left in this cold cruel world it will be everywhere. The song's use of atmospheric piano, synth and rock thunder recalls Brian Eno's rockier solo works or proto-nu-romantics Japan but is still defiantly original somehow.

Propeller Recordings signed Superfamily in the men’s bathroom at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Oslo, one cold winter day in February 2004. The same year they delivered the 4 track 'Champagne EP'. The lead song 'Back in Style' recalled prime time Rocket to the Crypt, 'Sulfur Heart' mirrored the slacker-rock of Dinosaur Jnr; 'Ugly Bugly' comes on like the organ heavy psychedelia of 13th Floor Elevators, whereas 'Shitfuck' must be one of the most radio un-friendly songs ever recorded.

The debut album 2005's 'Back in Paris' was no less ambitious. Tracks like 'I Don't Remember a Thing' come with heavy acid rock riffs straight from a 'Nuggets' compilation whilst elsewhere on 'Windows' and 'Taxi Dancing' you'll find traces of Echo & the Bunnymen and The Cure, which point to the future direction of 'Warszawa'.

Their debut bares all the hallmarks of a cult band in the making, whilst 'Warszawa' is the ultimate proof of their inevitable global supremacy, as reviews and sales in Norway will already testify.

'Warszawa' is currently available everywhere from iTunes.

For more information please contact alle@propellerrecordings.no

MORE TOURDATES, MUSIC AND VIDOES AVAILABLE AT

http://www.myspace.com/superfamilynorway
http://www.superfamily.no