In my youth, the trip to the Wainwright Stampede was a highlight of the year. There were the thrills of going on the rides, with the ferris Wheel and rollercoaster being my favourites. And then there were the rigged games. We knew the odds of winning were slim, but we fed them quarter after quarter in the elusive attempt of winning a stuffed animal. A favourite of mine was a game with a grappling hook that I had to maneuver over the prize of my choice and try to lift it to a chute that would drop it into my eager hands. And I won a nice prize once, a cowboy on a bucking horse. I should have been watching the live cowboys on real bucking horses instead of throwing good money away.

Then there were the food stalls; corndogs with mustard and cotton candy were my favourites. corn dogs weren’t a big mystery; they were just hot dogs wrapped in corn meal. Cotton candy, on the other hand, was a mystery to me. How could they get plain old sugar to transform into threads they could load on a stick?

Another mystery is how people can create beautiful music from the simplest things. Things like love, lost love, memories, regrets, and the joy of living. I am listening to a band this week named Spunsugar, hence the opening monologue about cotton candy, which is similar to spun sugar. The album is called “A Hole Forever” and it is worth giving a listen to.

Spunsugar takes dreams, broken dreams, to be more specific and weaves them through the song “Do You Know The Way To San Jose” by Dionne Warwick—the beauty of how to make cotton candy or, in this case sweet music.

A good mosh pit song is A Flicker In My Lights. Spunsugar adds: “We wanted to do a 2.0 version of our first ever single “Native Tongue,” intense and short. We managed to make it even shorter, 1:52. You don’t really need more than that.”

Photo credit: David Möller

The band members are Cordelia Moreau, Elin Ramstedt and Felix Sjöström

The next song grinds and pulsates and gets under your skin, where it weaves its magic. I think this is my favourite from this album. Good stuff.

Spunsugar explains it better than I do. “Skin Unwell talks about a paradox that only few people have experienced. A feeling of being annoyingly clever but at the same time being three steps behind – always. The sound image is still very Spunsugaresque with those intersections of rugged and soft, emphasis and stillness—a reflection of a dull and sluggish life rushing before someone’s eyes.”

Words For Others has a big bass beat chugging along, and the rest of the song comes along for the ride. Taxidermy is the closer.

“This is Cordelia’s favourite song on the album. It references the movie Psycho (1960), and she says it’s her most personal song to date. Therapy? We don’t know her.”

Closing remarks.

Spunsugar

“A Hole Forever is largely about coming to terms with everything dark within, the dirty and shameful. Being torn between owning it or trying to work it off. It’s about getting older and confessing things while the thought of one day dying sinks in. The album deals with the image that you are dying already when you are born and that life is a slow death. The songs become bricks of important points in life. Kind of like watching life flicker by but instead like in a movie it’s in a spiral.”

Norman Quote

A Hole Forever is a good album, especially if you like grunge post-punk edgy guitars and backing instruments with sweet vocals, thoughtful lyrics, and overall, just good music.

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