Ten Years Singing The "Hisingen Blues"

Time passes by, and before we know it, we've been living with music and memories longer than we realized. Occasionally, that time obscures the regrets we have for our own mistakes, where we don't remember being so wrong in the moment, because we don't like what it says about how stupid we once were. 2021 will have one of those moments for me, when we reach the ten year anniversary of Graveyard's "Hisingen Blues" being released.

I did not have my ears to the right ground in 2011, so I did not hear about Graveyard when they were putting out what is now a classic album. I may have heard the name in passing, but I hadn't started my journey of writing about music yet, so I was not quite as obsessive about hearing so many new records as I have become (within reason - I still don't overload myself with new album as I could). My first memory of Graveyard was reading my colleague D.M's best of the year list, wherein he named "Hisingen Blues" his favorite record of the year. Respecting his opinion, I made sure I gave the album a chance.

I didn't care for it.

For most of the next year, I thought about what I wasn't hearing in Graveyard's music that he was, and I couldn't come up with an answer. Perhaps it was my having less of a history with blues rock, or perhaps I was simply less open to things I hadn't found on my own, but no amount of trying changed my mind about Graveyard.

Then I was given the job of reviewing the follow-up album less than a year later, "Lights Out". Upon my first listen, I immediately heard in that record what D.M heard in "Hisingen Blues". Many times over the years, I have described that album as being a time capsule, as being the closest thing I'll ever know to feeling what it was like to live in the 70s as classic rock was taking shape. That naturally led me back to the starting point (for me - I wouldn't hear their debut album for a while yet).

Over the last ten years, I have been stunned to see how high "Hisingen Blues" has climbed in my estimation. What started as an album I dismissed before it had even finished playing now sits on my latest tally of my twenty favorite albums ever. What I at first didn't quite understand has now become an album that is a blueprint for what rock and roll is all about. Somehow, I didn't hear at first that Graveyard was hitting on my very own rules of songwriting.

Listening to it now, "Hisingen Blues" is a nearly perfect record. Graveyard has mastered the art of being timeless, with their music sounding both contemporary with today's trends, but also at home in the mid 70s. They are also a fusion of classic rock ideas, taking swagger from one area, the blues from another, and aggression from yet another. Within those 39 minutes, Graveyard boiled down the entirety of classic rock into one package, and did so with some of the strongest songs those bands never wrote.

The key to Graveyard is their simplicity. With a few chords and a small drum kit, they embrace the philosophy that the core of a song is a great idea. There's nothing fancy about what they do, but they have a little extra punch no other band doing the same thing is capable of. Their riffs are heavier, their melodies more haunting, their production more natural. While other bands sound like they are trying to replicate the past, Graveyard sounds like the past lives within them. Trust me, that's a major difference.

I could rattle off every song on the record and make the same points about the genius of their simplicity, but nothing proves Graveyard's worth more than the closing song, "The Siren". For six minutes, Graveyard gives us a song of extreme drama that plays out across tidal waves of dynamics, slashing guitars, and Joakim Nilsson shredding his vocals chords as he screams about how "a demon came into my room". I've always found Led Zeppelin to be overrated, but listening to "The Siren", I hear the same things people from the 70s talk about. It's the purest expression of rock, a moment of perfection bands stumble upon rarely. It's something more than music, bigger than an album. It's the transcendent ability of music to speak directly into us.

I didn't hear that in 2011 when I first listened to "Hisingen Blues", but I damn sure do now. Ten years changes a lot, but few changes have been more welcome than the revelation of Graveyard's first classic album.