### Stolen Mondays: Meantime

#### 15/06/10 || Trauma

I wasn’t so aware that Swedes love the coc… – I mean, rock. Like, lots of goddamn rock bands in Sweden, the majority of them not half bad most of the time. Cowboy Prostitutes are not bad with a singer that took time to get used to; The Hellacopters, no longer together but still the best of them all, and another new bunch here called Stolen Mondays. Why anyone would want to steal Monday, let along call themself a Stolen Monday, is beyond me. But I’m a native English speaker, whatever in the fuck would I know?

This EP starts off with one of those abominations of modern albums, the intro track. It might be okay, but my vehement hatred of intro tracks for albums stops me from really caring whether or not it is very good. Seriously, in the end it has nothing to do with the music other than to tell you, “We like rock and roll, listen to this slide guitar and piano”.

The first track proper, “Hardass mary”, has got your syncopated driving riff, standard rock fare but succeeding in the fact that it’s listenable. Quite so. Highlight of the EP? Not sure, that will take some time to decide as it’s even taken me time to get into this album. I’ll go ahead and say yes anyways, though. If you want something to throw into a rock mix for a club, car ride, whatever, “Hardass Mary” would make a good enough addition. I’m not particularly feeling much of the rest of the tunes aside from “Against my will”, though. They’re not bad but they certainly feel almost like a chore to get through. “Motoranthem” creeps back up into the more listenable area, but still feels like they ran out of catchy, memorable ideas after “Against my will”. When you get to “God knows I’ve failed”, you realize their problem: they slow it down just a bit too much throughout the EP.

The instrumental, vocal, and sonic aspect of this band is all fine. Nothing sounds like shit, the tunes just kinda lose me more than I was hoping. The potential and songwriting is definitely there, proven in two tunes, but overall it falls just short of the line. Still not bad, though.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Website: www.stolenmondays.com
- Band
- Fredrik Eriksson: vocals, guitar
- Mårten Mattson: guitar, vocals
- Thomas Elmberg: bass
- Marcus Sjöblom: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Meantime
- 02. Hardass Mary
- 03. Against my will
- 04. Build me up/tear me down
- 05. Motoranthem
- 06. God knows I’ve failed