MOBILE HOMES
THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE AWAY COMPILATION ALBUM MEMENTO MATERIA RELEASE: SPRING 1999 REVIEW: JUNE 11, 1999 
Non Swedes have probably never heard of the name Mobile Homes. But in the late eighties and early nineties Mobile Homes was the leading Swedish synthpop act, with lots of record releases, gigs, TV-appearances and so forth. They have worked with famous, but not always impressive, music profiles like Christer Sandelin, Christian Falk, Dennis Pop, Julian Beeston and Karl Bartos. Back then, most people in the Swedish, so called "synth" culture listened to bands from abroad and there were almost no well-known Swedish bands in this field of music. The lack of competition naturally gave Mobile Homes an advantage. But I'm sure they would have managed pretty well anyway, if all the S.P.O.C.Ks and Elegant Machinerys had been there to give them a fight. Mobile Homes' problem, however - being too similar to a certain band from Basildon, might have caused them even more trouble than it actually did. The Stockholm quartet's strength has always been their ability to compose quite strong and straight-forward pop songs like "Something Better" and "Afraid". And they have stayed true to this over the years, without compromises. Until last year's Bartos-produced guitar pop fiasco "Mobile Homes", that is. But that's a different story entirely, since no songs from this Synthetic Symphony/Arcade album is included here. Memento Materia has collected Mobile Homes material from their early days in 1986 - to 1994. All the hit singles are there, of course, as well as some other nice tunes from their albums. And for the first time on CD, their rare early vinyl single songs are included as well as one previously unreleased single song. This makes the 17 track compilation interesting also for us who have heard most of their music. But as usual, a best of-album is mostly a fine introduction for beginners. MIKAEL KAHRLE |
  |