"You see too many shows, who cares if you miss this one?"

Last Sunday I declined going out to haunted houses in the Detroit area because I wanted to see Dungen play the Magic Stick. Being a big fan of a lot of Scandinavian music (Dungen are Swedish), I know how hard it is for a lot of these bands to make it to this country for tours. So I had to go.

A few months ago, an ex-girlfriend was telling me about a show on MTV2 called Subterraneans. I stopped watching any of the MTV stations years ago because the only ones that show music 24 hours a day show crappy r&b or bad hip hop all day. So one Sunday night I was laying in bed going through the channels, and I came across a video that could've been from Blue Cheer. The music, the look, the special effects all looked like something that the psychedelic proto-stoner rock band would've done. But it looked too new, and the singer was not singing in English. I was intrigued by "Panda" with it's Sabbath guitar and bass chorus and chiming verses. So I watched to the very end and found out it was Dungen. A few days later, I remembered to look into it and ordered their most recent album "Ta Det Lungt" from Amazon, because I couldn't find it in any local stores.

So, last Sunday they played the Magic Stick. The band themselves did look a bit hippy-ish, but didn't talk or act like it. A couple of them had dreads. Of course, as with most Scandinavians I've met, they were very polite and had no problem with English. It's strange to me that they've made it out of Sweden and are still singing in their native language. This isn't common.

According to the band's site, Gustav Ejstes grew up in Lanna, a small village in Sweden. His father taught him the violin, guitar, and piano as well as giving him insight into Swedish folk. I didn't know until recently that Sweden has a deep history with excellent folk music. Gustav took in all that he could including a detour into hip hop and sampling, but while digging for records he started coming across all kinds of crazy Swedish psychedelic folk from the '60s and '70s. This inspired him, and he decided he was going to go back to the simple tools, the guitar, drums, and piano. He wanted to show that he could do it all himself, so he hibernated in his music studio in his grandmother's basement and started creating what the Swedish music press would call 'folkrockpsych'. And that, is exactly what Dungen is.

Except onstage, Gustav's sound is fleshed out by four people, not just him. The album title "Ta Det Lungt" translates to 'take it easy'. This is definitely music for taking it easy. On the surface, the first track "Panda" feels like a stoner-rock kinda thing, but when you dig deep into the album, it's a fucking masterpiece of folk and pop and psychedelic rock. And his band pulls it off live with no problem. Onstage, most of the songs are extended into jams. But it never gets annoying. The talent and skill freely falls from their fingers and drifts over the crowd.

Hopefully, with this tour doing as well as it is, Dungen will be able to loop back around to Detroit again for another show. When they do, you should check it out.