SOUND ON SOUND BY BEAGLE

Always nice to find a lost treasure to listen to on Spotify or Grooveshark.   Today, I found a real gem  - Beagle’s SOUND ON SOUND.

Beagle, who were from Sweden, were an early 90’s Beatles influenced pop group.  I would call them power pop but their sound is far too gentle.  There are delicate Rickenbacker guitars, lots of acoustic guitar too, and three part harmonies but also plenty of strings and some keyboards and even a banjo or too.  Definitely more 68 or 69 Beatles than 63 or 64 Beatles.

Other bands/musicians similar to Beagle – Squeeze, Raspberries, Owsley, Jellyfish

I was turned on to them by a guy I worked with in 1992 who taped their debut record SOUND ON SOUND for me.  After that I left that job and the cassette get munched as they often do,  I thought about buying a CD when E-Bay started up but by this point it had become a collector’s item and was commanding more than $100 for a copy.

There’s nothing revolutionary about these guy’s music.  They just do what they do very well.  There is not one bad song on this record (although I notice the slow songs are more memorable than the fast ones).  Favorite track if forced to pick would be This Time.

I watched a documentary on the power pop scene and they had a section about power pop in other countries with a brief section on Sweden and Beagle was mentioned as the influence for a lot of the other Swedish guitar pop bands that followed.  Sort of Sweden’s Big Star.

Another found treasure – I had no idea that Beagle made a second album but they did.  I just finished listening to WITHIN which was made a year or so after SOUND ON SOUND.  It’s almost as good as SOUND with jangle-y guitars more in the forefront.