A five track ep by a young group from Oakland California with the weight of the world on their shoulders and their heads full of images from old movies.
Their name comes from the 1924 silent - The Saga of Gosta Berling in which Greta Garbo made her film debut.
Staying with the Holywood theme, the first track takes its title from the 1941 Busby Berkeley extravanganza 'Zeigfeld Girl' and kicks off with a Strokes style intro and has lyrics about lost love amid the chorus lines.
The Garden of Allah is named after a 1927 film starring Marlene Dietrich and not to be confused with the 1995 song with the same title by Don Henley. Singer Damon Anderson, who sounds like the lovechild of Robert Smith and Nico, injects this lament with a world weary mood of romantic melancholia.
The most upbeat song is Rebecca (after the Hitchcock classic) which is reminscent of Morrissey circa The Smiths' first album.
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These Days is the one cover - their version of the Jackson Browne classic features a melodic acoustic refrain which makes it just slightly less doom laden than Nico's definitive version from Chelsea Girls.
The ep closes with a moody song called Berlin ("Berlin,Berlin/I kinda like the sound of it/Berlin,Berlin/ Your Lulu's coming)
There's a certain maudlin charm to this concept record of sorts and Gosta Berling's songs capture well the languid sense of nostalgia for lost dreams and celluloid fantasies.
www. gostaberling.com
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