"Everyday is a winding road," sang Sheryl Crow, but what the hell does she know, she didn’t write anything on that album. Anyway my point is when you run a website devoted to independent music, regardless of style or where on this planet the band comes from, then you get some very strange things dropping into your mailbox.
So far we have dealt with Britpop from America, Canada, Australia and even Britain. To that list we can now add Sweden. Yes Sweden, home of Abba, saunas, Absolut Vodka, Bjorn Borg and erm other stuff, but not to my knowledge experimental Britpop bands. Oh well you live and learn.
‘Hide Park Rangers’ are from Bandhagen, which my extensive Internet research tells me is in Sweden and is probably in or close to Stockholm (although don’t quote me on that). It is also the home to an addiction specialist who isn’t very attractive. Ah the power of the Internet as a research tool, if I had only had it when I was in university. I just might have got an even lower grade.
‘We Work At Our Posture’ is a very low budget EP that arrived on a CD-R with a hand-drawn CD booklet that was very Radiohead in style. The music is also somewhere in old-school Radiohead territory, but also borrows liberally from mid ‘90s Britpop in general. The result is a four track EP that shows some genuine promise.
Opener ‘President’ comes across all old-school ‘Blur’; there is even a cheeky-boy  cockney twang to the vocals. Backing up the vocals are some distorted and fuzzy guitars and a pounding rhythm section. Next is ‘Pull the Lever’, another tune that brings images of Blur in their indie prime to mind. If you were to hear this track, or anything from ‘Hide Park Rangers’ you would assume they were British and one has to wonder how hard the singer worked on affecting that accent. He sounds more British than I do.
Track three is ‘All Cars Look The Same’, with its opening line "I hate people when they’re not around". It is a fine song that shows the most originality of the four tracks on offer. The music is thick and distorted around the bizarre, yet interesting lyrics. The singer screams painfully over and over again ‘All these cars look the same’ as guitars and keyboards make noises they really shouldn’t. Probably not a song to listen to on drugs. Not that any of you ever would of course.
Finishing off the EP is ‘Cynik Waiting’ a midway point between the more commercial opening tracks and the more artistically pleasing ‘All Cars Look The Same’. It lasts a mere two minutes and thirteen seconds and the whole EP is less than thirteen minutes. It is far to short a span of time to really get an impression on a band, but what little morsels ‘Hide Park Rangers’ see fit to throw our way has us salivating for more. A very interesting product from a very interesting band.

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