Tages

Studio

BEAR FAMILY. LP+DVD Ground-breaking riposte to Sgt. Pepper is Sweden’s best pop album of the 1960s.

Studio was issued in December 1967 by Parlophone’s Swedish division. Two of its tracks were recorded at Abbey Road. Tages (pronounced tah-gez) were Sweden’s most progressive pop group and always pushing forward. Their fifth album, Studio, is as striking as The Zombies’ Odessey And Oracle and more hard-hitting than The Hollies’ Butterfly. Crucially, instead of looking east or to music hall for inspiration, Tages were Scandinavia’s first mainstream band to draw from local folk traditions. This was radical: folk was the music of the countryside, of unsophisticated rural regions. What they came up with was still psych-pop, but folk-infused in a way that had never been heard before. A DVD accompanies this reissue: their stunning May 1968 TV special Dalamania. Its director, Peter Goldmann, was behind the Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever promos. Studio is as important as any album by The Beatles.