Barcelona is twee to the extreme

By Jordan Sargent

Published Feb. 27, 2007

I'm From Barcelona's full-length debut, Let Me Introduce My Friends, might be the ultimate litmus test of how much you value lyrics in your music, or rather how far you're willing to dig into and play along with lyrics to find meaning.

Haters — and I'm From Barcelona has vigorous ones — have decried Let Me Introduce My Friends as "tirelessly obnoxious," "too happy," or simply "bullshit." Yes, at times it borders on all three. Yes, at times it can give you that not-too-good feeling you get after the third piece of birthday cake. But, and I don't want to pass judgment on you, reader, you have to be an eternal curmudgeon, self-loathing or terribly depressed to not at least mildly enjoy Let Me Introduce My Friends.

This is twee on some dangerous form of steroid blasted from the top of mountaintops and out of hot air balloons. I'm From Barcelona, a roughly 29-piece collective, wields trumpets, banjos, jangly guitars and twinkling bells like it is the most welcoming gang ever. These songs feel like getting beat over the head with a rainbow and being hugged by the sun, but damn if they aren't completely addictive.

"Oversleeping" is a very fitting opener. Clipped vocal samples whoosh by as if you're literally being transported into the Candyland world this band seems to live in. A barrage of guitars, glockenspiels and a glimmering keyboard line then come in for the kill: an ambush of smiles. Right before the instruments, some dude yells "hey!" as if the band has noticed your arrival. They've seen that you're not smiling or frolicking in the dandelions, and they've decided to change that. And they're doing it with force. Seconds later, its frontman and gang leader Emmanuel Lundgren: "Damn! Oversleeping again/ Damn! I can't believe I did it once again." By the one-minute mark, you're headlong into a chorus that 100 bands (hello, OK Go) would murder for. The song ends in a delirious flurry of competing hooks and melodies. If your heartbeat is not racing when "Oversleeping" commences, do two things: Check your pulse and put your Bright Eyes album back on.

The rest of the album's tracks revel in this type of Belle-and-Sebastian-on-a-sugar-high type of instrumentation. "We're From Barcelona" and "Jenny" open with regal trumpet lines and "Collection Of Stamps" is a joyous mix of guitar chords and "ba-ba-ba" melodies.

But as sweet as the instrumentation is, I'm From Barcelona succeeds because it knows how to properly harness the power of its 29 members. The album's most anthemic and rewarding moments — the finale on "Oversleeping," the verses on "Treehouse" and the bridges on "We're From Barcelona" — come when (presumably) all 29 members unleash their voices onto the song. Lundgren, the album's scraggly orchestrator, is a wizard with melody, and when he lets the full band loose, it's hard not to get swept along with them.

The main sticking point, though, is still going to be the lyrics. "Oversleeping" is about oversleeping at face value, but its last refrain ("Been oversleeping on Monday/ I don't care let's pretend that it's Sunday") and the boisterously vigorous way in which Lundgren delivers his vocals makes this endlessly relatable. It's not just about oversleeping, it's about enthusiasm, exuberance and not wanting to grow up, channeled through not wanting to get up. "Jenny," which is about whisking a girl away to Paris, is universal in its idea of doing anything in your power to appease a significant other.

This isn't just uplifting music, it's comforting music. It's bright and beautiful and sunny and fun. Feeling down? That's cool; Lundgren tells you all you need to know during the album's last track: "Barcelona loves you."