(Update Feb 1, 2018: The text below is about the 2012 solo debut Soundshine. Shortly the second album will be released. Expect an update soon!).
After too many years of silence finally the Stockholm based pop genius David Myhr has made his debut as a solo artist. A magnificent solo album, Soundshine, is just released. Two tasters can be found in the form of the singles “Got You Where He Wanted” and “Looking for a life”.
The songs are representative of everything Myhr stands for: melodic, well crafted pop music with a heart. If a thread of timelessness runs through The Beatles, Wings, Crowded House, Jellyfish, Fountains of Wayne, and The Feeling, David Myhr’s music appears at several places along that thread – sometimes even simultaneously. It’s also easy to hear that his music has sprung from the same Northern indie pop soil as bands like Popsicle and The Wannadies; Myhr himself was a frontman of The Merrymakers, a band from the same area and era. During the mid-to-late Nineties, the band enjoyed international success, among other things selling in excess of 100 000 albums in Japan.
In addition to the aforementioned first two singles, Soundshine is chock-full of fantastic pop songs. It varies between life-affirming happy pills, melancholic longing with a chorus that opens up (“I Love The Feeling”), frustration (“Get It Right”), and insightful reflections (“Never Mine”). “Don’t Say No”, with its chiming Petty/Lynne guitars, brings the message that life is a fantastic opportunity. The piano driven “Ride Along” and airy “Cut To the Chase”, give similar advice; don’t push your dreams aside, pursue them. And so the record continues, presenting one masterful melody after the other along the way. The sound contains tasty guitars, lovely hooks, gorgeous harmony vocals, and pop lyrics that actually say something. Delightful surprises can sometimes be found around the corner.
On his first solo album, David has worked with Andreas Dahlbäck (Anna Ternheim, The Motorhomes, Eskobar), who co-produced the album as well as playing the drums. David wrote most of the material himself, with some additional lyrical input provided by other major Swedish songsmiths, Andreas Mattsson (Popsicle, Sweet Chariots) and his brother Fredrik, and Peter Morén of Peter Bjorn and John.
David Myhr stands for talented and intelligent and melodic pop music at its purest. Forget about scandals. Forget about docusoaps. Forget about ”cool”, but ultimately shallow, rock’n’ roll myths. This album is centered around the songs – and what songs!
”I love that tingling down the spine when I hear a great song – when superior craftmanship meets the magic. I constantly strive for that that with my own songs”, says David.
He writes because he wants to, and because he has to. His goal is to make others feel the way he does when he’s moved by a great song.
”If making music leads to interesting things happening and meeting great people, that’s enough for me. The fact that the record industry has been proclaimed dead is liberating in a way, because everyone is free to make music that they genuinely like!”
The name of the album is Soundshine. It could just as well have been titled For The Love Of Melody.