Arre! Arre! –  We Ride the Universe [IMPORT Limited Green Vinyl] – New LP

New LP from Arre! Arre!, limited (100 pressed) green-vinyl edition.  While there's some attitude and surf sounds that blast through all their albums, each clearly has its own sound, this one sounding like a dog-eared paperback based on a 1960s biker-chick flick, complete with engine sounds revving between cuts.  Back in ' 63, when surf rock was brought to the blacktop, hot-rod rock hit the streets, and while limited, motorcycle rock also jumped from the gate to show a burnt-calves and dirty-fingernails version of surf, and this sounds like parts of that mixed with grrrl riot and girl group, galloping stallions and Billy Strange doing spaghetti-western themes, The Shangri-Las poured into the tank of a machine hand-built and wrenched together by Arre! Arre!  Another essential listen from this Swedish outfit. -- winch (green noise)

When Arre! Arre! won the prestigious “Rock Album Of the Year” P3 Award for 2019’s “Tell Me All about Them”, they inadvertently became either the most loved or most hated rock band in Sweden, after they used the majority of their acceptance speech mooning the cameras on live national TV, while simultaneously daring to critique a certain local nazi-sympathazing politician. The Twitter Egg-Profiles were outraged and disgusted, whilst the insulted sexist teenage degenerates took to the youtube comment sections to engage in discourse and portray their side of the issues arisen. “I don’t pay my public TV license to be subjected to seeing these f***ing left-wing fat asses” one of the many traumatised victims eloquently disclosed.

Naturally, to calm the death threats and diffuse the tensions sweeping the nation, Arre! Arre! shortly returned with single “Me & My Fat Ass Friends”, the first taste of 2020’s “Heavy Breathing”, a five track EP with a very proud and unashamed theme of sexuality running heavily throughout.

Fast forward to 2021, and a global pandemic slightly finally shifts focus somewhat for the digital elite from Arre! Arre! to other pressing matters of 5G, Chinese bats & Vaccine conspiracies. With touring off the menu, the band found themselves with more time than expected to focus on “We Ride The Universe”, their next full length album.

Working again with long time collaborator Joakim Lindberg as producer, the band have maintained their core inspiration from the 90s Riot Grrrl scene, but also broadening their sound to include a wider range of influences - from post-punk and 60’s ballads, to James Brown, to the Spice Girls.

As usual, the album has a strong underlying theme throughout - this time of motorbikes and female biker gangs, with the band even going to the extreme of recording local bikers driving around the car park of the Studio Sickan to sample within the tracks. Combined with the other new production quirks such as ABBA-inspired choirs and galloping percussion, “We Ride The Universe” has turned into a markedly cohesive and unique album for the band, sure to impress fans both new and old.

“We Ride The Universe” will be released worldwide on April 8th 2022 via PNKSLM Recordings, on limited edition vinyl and all digital formats.