I have been to Starbucks once in my life. They lured me into it. The hype was (un)real. I thought I was in for something special and tasty. The staff wrote my name on a cup. It didn't make me feel special. It was assembly line disguised as personal service. The coffee was bland. Not tasty. Starbucks has been criticized for creating a contrived atmosphere through forced, formulaic employee interactions, scripted, overly enthusiastic conversations, and performative, marketing-driven messages. Hence the policy of hand-writing customer names on cups. The first Starbucks coffee shop in Sweden opened in 2010 at Arlanda airport (outside Stockholm). The first real coffee shop in the centre of Stockholm opened in 2014 (which was the one I visited). The Starbucks expansion plan was megalomaniac. At its peak, Starbucks had 17 coffee shops in Sweden. Today, only three remain. Why did they utterly fail in Sweden? First, Starbucks came too late into the market. Competitors like Waynes Coffee and Espresso House had already established their concept and created a loyal customer base. Second, Starbucks' coffee quality was mediocre to bad. For a coffee chain this is a major problem. Third, too much sugar in their products. The only people who go there now are tourists.    

The much-anticipated second solo album from the widely recognized godfather of the gothic country genre, David Eugene Edwards, is going to be released on May 22 2026. I don't need to prelisten to place a preorder. David Eugene Edwards' first solo album "Hyacinth" was a stellar album. The official copywriting is better than mine, so here it is in its entirety: "For more than three decades, David Eugene Edwards has carved out a singular path through American music. First with the gothic folk urgency of 16 Horsepower, then with the devotional intensity of Wovenhand, and more recently through the stripped-down landscape of his solo work. On his sophomore solo album Mercurial Silence, Edwards continues the path established on his 2023 debut Hyacinth, while pushing his sound into new territory through the expanded use of electronic production and layered textures. The record finds Edwards channeling the stark intensity that has defined much of his career while embracing a broader sonic palette that feels both ancient and modern. His unmistakable voice moves through layers of bowed strings, percussive drones, and spectral electronics, giving Mercurial Silence the feeling of a transmission from somewhere just beyond reach." Good copywriting. Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

  

Black Tongue has arrived. In pieces. The jiffy bag is perforated, the cd case is severly cracked, the insert is torned and damaged and, last but not least, the cd is split into three pieces (see image). What could have caused the ultraviolence? I have been buying cds online for decades. A cracked cd case now and then is all that I ever have experienced. This is something else. I think we need to indulge ourselves in criminal psychology. An autopsy report documenting "excessive violence"— often referred to in forensic literature as overkill — details injuries that far exceed the force necessary to cause a victim's death. Such cases are characterized by a high number of wounds, indicating intense aggression, anger, or a specific, often personal, relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. A good friend suggested that maybe a zealous MAGA supporter, who works at the post office and sees it as his job to destroy all non-edifying music, is to blame. This theory cannot be ruled out. Anyway, I have filed a formal complaint to PostNord AB (Swedish Postal Service), which they are (hopefully) currently processing swiftly. No matter the outcome, I will place a new order. You roll the dice and take your chances.

The periodic table, a.k.a. the periodic table of the elements, is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements into rows (periods) and columns (groups). Ordered, structured and precise in every aspect. Sometimes I wish there was a table for gothic country. One of the reasons to why I started this website was that I thought I could bring some order to the chaos. How naive. To classify you need agreed and accepted standards. Objective criteria and norms refer to independent, measurable, and verifiable standards used to make fair, consistent decisions or evaluations, uninfluenced by personal emotions, biases, or subjective opinions. There are no agreed and accepted standards in the genre. Only, to a greater or lesser extent, substantiated opinions. The task to bring some order to the genre is insurmountable. For example, trying to decompose the genre into trunk, branch, twig and leaf isn't easy. Which is the main genre and which is the subgenre? Exactly when, how and why does gothic country turn into gothic americana? How do you distinguish Southern Gothic from other Gothic traditions? I could go on. My contribution is the geographical origin as the basis of classification. Sounds fail-safe, but how do classify a band like The Devil Makes Three who started out in Vermont (Northeast), but moved and are now based in Californa (West). I made it simple and chose "first" origin. There is (was) a site called Every Noise at Once, check it out here (opens in a new window). The site is an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for genre-shaped distinctions at Spotify. The guy who ran it lost his job at Spotify and eventually his access to their data. But even before that the site came up with some pretty wild and crazy ideas of artists and bands belonging to different genres/subgenres. Such important tasks cannot be left to machines. Humans beat machine. Every time.  

Mr Plow is working on a new album called "At One With Nature". The album title seems to be inspired by Rousseau’s natural state (the hypothetical, pre-societal condition where humans are isolated, innocent, and driven by self-preservation and pity, rather than reason or malice). Mr Plow explains in an e-mail: "The working title for the new record is "At One With Nature". Twelve tracks in total. It's going to be released on vinyl (and download/streaming). Probably late summer this year. On Monkey Basket Records (a small indie label in the East Midlands). The album title relates to a number of the songs (six I think) and their focus on nature (mountains, wildlife). It wasn't planned that way, just a happy accident. The guitars are louder and more aggressive than we've ever had before, but the songs are the same dark, disastrous fun they've always been." You can get a glimpse of the upcoming album at Bandcamp. A melodic single called "Flowers" has been released as a free download. It has all the desirable Mr Plow trademarks including the deep and dark vocals. And yes, the guitars are louder and more aggressive.