THE PRESS RELEASE: “Sweden’s Dictator Ship announce their debut album Your Favorites. It’s an immediate outburst in raw and primitive rock n roll, with lush harmonized vocals inspired by 1960s soul bands. Combined with an impossibly intense rhythm section, Dictator Ship is the prime and natural energy source that the world has been searching for. Your Favorites was recorded in a small cabin in Värmland, Sweden, engineered by band member John Sijbren Leonard. He comments: “I am pleased with the lo-fi sound and the honesty of this album. It sounds like us, and that’s the hardest thing in recording, to capture your own sound.” The band mic’ed and pre-mixed all the drums through an old PA-mixing console from the ’70s. Then they summed the drums up to two stereo channels, so only two drum channels were recorded. This was done to save on channels, mostly because they only had eight channels available for the whole recording. The instruments were recorded live with vocals added later on. The reason for this unique approach was that John wanted to focus on the band’s live sound rather than studio enhancements. What listeners hear on Your Favorites is what they’d hear from Dictator Ship at a small Swedish pub — or perhaps one day, a big-city stadium.”
MY TWO CENTS: You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem, brothers and sisters. Thankfully, Swedish foursome Dictator Ship are on the right side of that question. Chiefly because they unabashedly worship at the Detroit rock ’n’ soul altar of the mighty MC5. And as this seven-track firebomb makes unmistakably clear, they have an uncanny ability to channel the Motor City legends’ hard-driving grooves, slashing guitars and gruff soul-powered vocals. If you’re looking for a band that knows how to kick out the jams, Dictator Ship just might live up to their album title.
