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Over the Water

FRIED PICKLES WITH RANCH FLAVORED LAY'S. As you can tell by that first line, I recently had a friend that went on a trip to the States and was kind enough to bring me back a bag of 'merican Lay's (unsolicited at that [thanks Top]). I got them on Monday and I'm already cracking them and posting..this is a pretty quick turnaround from procurement to this here blog. I'm not going to tell you what I think they're going to be like as I have heard second hand of another's first impression, so without further ado...they smell like dill pickle chips with the faint odor of a gym bag (or something to that affect [that was unexpected]). They taste like creamy dill's first cousin. Dill is up front and centre with some creamy texture to the chip seasoning. There's almost a hint of the most faint blue cheese flavour, I know they're telling me it's ranch on the bag but I get some sort of blue cheeseness (maybe it's just me [I have been eating a lot of blue cheese lately, maybe it's taken over my tastebuds..hah]). There's a slow build of black pepper that becomes more present the further I get into consuming..and it moreso shows it's face in the back end of the flavour. The further into the bag the more I notice the cheeseness and the less I can make out the dill. Man, these are different, they almost morphed during consumption..but I like 'em (I think).

 Earlier this year I came home to a heavy box at my front door with a shipping address from Universal in Toronto. Well, I couldn't remember ordering this so it only meant 1 thing...I had won another contest through Exclaim. Now what exactly had I won? Didn't know, I enter any contest that even remotely interests me. When I got inside and cut open the box I found that I had won The Cardigans discography, you know, the Lovefool band. Like most people that weren't deep into Sweedish 90's pop I knew The Cardigans as a one hit wonder. But the 6 albums that I received told me that maybe there was something more to them. So I proceeded to listen to the albums chronologically starting with Emmerdale (and after listening to all 6 albums it ended up being my favourite). On Emmerdale, The Cardigans show signs of the light pop that they become famous for with Lovefool, but there's more layers to the bands sound than their big hit got accross. Emmerdale is a dreamy lounge pop album with some funky jazz(?) infused into it here and there. The odd song has a bit more of a rock backbone, but it doesn't overshadow the dreamy loungeness of it. There's a flute that pops up to give it an almost 60's flavour on a song or two. The lead singer Nina Persson's voice is smooth with the slightest bit of smoke to it. She has somewhat a tweeish sound (this is not meant to be derogatory one bit). Listening to this album evokes visions of a jazz bar. Great album.

Stay hydrated,
marc

PS. I started looking into the primary songwriter for The Cardigans, multi instrumentalist Peter Svensson, and he's still out there writing and producing (for some big names). Huh, he was a co-writer on Carly Rae Jepsen's I Really Like You. But that's not what spurred this ps..he co(?)wrote and produced 3 songs on Eagle-Eye Cherry's 2012 album Can't Get Enough. I did not expect Eagle-Eye Cherry to still be making music (he just put out a new album in 2018) and he's Swedish..and it appears that his birth name is Eagle-Eye Cherry. I haven't listened to anything from him other than his massive single but I just might have to check him out.

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