Everyone in the songs of Lawrence, Kansas’ Drakkar Sauna is standing at the wrong end of a shotgun, staring into two black eyes, smoky nostrils that mean the kind of business that requires a spade and six feet of digging. Everyone in these songs is on the perilous side of a paradise that’s preoccupied with sins and antiquated stories of good people wishing for bad things to occur. You know that feeling you’ve had when a bus is driving toward you on the opposite side of the road and for a quarter of a second thought what it would feel like to jerk the wheel to the left and give that bus a shiner? It doesn’t mean you’re suicidal or homicidal, at least I don’t think you’re like that, but it does mean that you can relate to the worrisome and spectacular music that Jeff and Wallace spend their freetime among the wheat fields creating. Their dedication to writing as many songs about untimely hangings, deserved hangings and hopeful hangings (you really could insert any mode of death in here for hangings because they use them all without prejudice) is valiant and it makes it hard to know how they really feel. Even in the studio, they were quiet and businesslike, as if they were siphons for this overflow of morbidity. These guys are my favorite discovery of the year, a statement that doesn’t come nor is taken lightly. Although, should truth be told, I put a very soft, pillowy emphasis on it actually being my find. I owe it all to Mark Rice, the gentlemanly drummer of the wonderful Impossible Shapes who told me, while wearing a tan Drakkar Sauna T-shirt with a man taking a sword through the chest, said, “You’ve got to get these guys in here.” We’re good, if not great listeners. – Sean Moeller

The first song
Very Much Alone, Part 4: Oh Fuck, I'm Fucked, Fuck (Drakkar Sauna) [1.61MB] [4272 downloads]


– original version appears on “Rover”
My favorite line: “I prayed for God to kill me/I prayed that he’d kill you to/One day he’s going to get round to my prayers/I wonder which one he’ll choose.” My instincts say it will be whichever one got the most votes. These things are won on effort and effort alone.

The second song
The Debut of the Tambourine Shoe (Drakkar Sauna) [3.79MB] [2978 downloads]


– original version appears on the band’s self-titled record
What’s a tambourine shoe? The same as a regular shoe, just with more melodic, beat-happy soles that giggle with a rattle when you step. The breakdowns and different pieces to this song give you the sense that you’re losing reception and getting random mentions of Batman.

The third song
Icing Down Her Top (Drakkar Sauna) [2.55MB] [3037 downloads]


– the original version appears on the band’s self-titled record
My favorite line: “We’ll have a pen for rabbits and a bird for every cat.” My version of an idyllic place would require two-to-three birds for every cat. And now is that daily or just one bird to eat cat and then it’s over cause that doesn’t sound like enough birds for the cats.

The fourth song
Pirate Treasure (Drakkar Sauna) [3.62MB] [3134 downloads]


– the original version appears on the band’s self-titled record
A song that reminds us that whenever anyone discovers pirate’s gold, they find that they suddenly have a lot more friends. It’s too bad the pirates couldn’t take it all with them just so we wouldn’t have these terrible instances in our modern lives.