For All Happy Endings

I once saw David & The Citizens perform at the Eurosonic showcase festival in Groningen in the basement of NewsCafe. I still consider it one to the worst sounding bands ever, but that's due to the sound engineers. With lots of effort I could extract something that sounded like songs and I thought these compositions were not that bad. So looking them up, I found out that "Now She Sleeps in a Box in the Good Soil of Denmark" is indeed a fantastic song, and "I've Been Floating Upstream Since We Parted" and "Song Against Life" are also good. The rest of the material varies between good intensions and ok songwriting. All in all it is a decent debut album for a band with an awful name. Wonder why they did not have a commercial breakthrough... wink wink. It's not the best album on this list, but a nice one to listen to and for people with found memories of a performance like me, it deserves those four stars.

Didn’t really leave an impression outside of the intro/outro, falls into the radio-friendly indie of the early aughts where things all sounded similarly schmaltzy and way too twee.

Couldn’t get past the annoying vocals.

Really enjoyed this

Brilliant

I've made a couple of really good discoveries from this project lately, and this is one of them. Really interesting. Reminds me a bit of Bright Eyes maybe? But not like in a copycat way, just a bit reminiscent. Will listen again, and check out their other material. 4 stars.

Really good 4

Surprising. Never consciously known of the act, but many of the actual songs sounded curiously familiar. Decent enough, enjoyable listen.

Yep, very good early noughts ndie-rock. The (relatively raw and vulnerable) vocals, the kitchen-sink arrangements (that trumpet!), and the anguished songwriting all makes David & The Citizens sound like a distant Swedish cousin of Neutral Milk Hotel. I especially enjoyed "I've Been Floating Upstream Since We Parted", "Something Not Sunlight", "Song Against Life" and "Now She Sleeps in A Box In the Good Soil of Denmark". But every song is actually worth more than one listen. This band is most notably good for the final build-up or final surprising arrangements of their compositions, which very often raise the stakes in a significant manner. There's a universe somewhere where this act is far bigger than it is, taking the place of its far more successful models or successors. Maybe they didn't reach that level because of the weird traditional intro and outro in this LP... But the exact same thing happens in *In The Aeroplane Over The Sea*, and yet it never prevented Neutral Milk Hotel from being rediscovered. Go figure. 🤷 Maybe *For All Happy Endings* is missing its own "Two-Headed Boy", the sort of song that just blasts through your brains the first time you hear it. But we come *so* close to it several times around in this record. To the point where I think I'm gonna buy a copy of this LP. So many thanks to the citizen who suggested it, at least. 3.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 4 8.5/10 for more general purposes (5 + 3.5) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 83 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 106 (including this one) Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 212 ---- Émile, j'ai vu ta dernière réponse. J'essaie de trouver le temps de te laisser la mienne dans les jours qui viennent. Désolé, ça fait longtemps que je te dis ça, mais la situation est un peu compliquée par chez moi en ce moment... Rien de grave, mais je trouve pas beaucoup de temps pour moi. Porte-toi bien

More alright indie rock for the alright indie rock mountain that is now roughly 75% of the user submitted list. This is so alright that I said to myself: "Wow, alright."

This one was ok but I just couldn't fully get into it. Missing something.

The most forgettable indie movie soundtrack you've ever heard.

Delightful euro pop rock

Poppy joyful fun that played as I listened

Kinda wish the whole album sounded like the first track. Not bd though!

I liked this well enough, musically moreso than lyrically, where there was little too inspire. Functional soft rock on the folkier end of the spectrum.

This was fine. Not too remarkable

These guys can actually hold a tune

Pretty ok early 2000s sound. Maybe not rocking my world or anything like that but liked listening.

We have enough generic indie rock that doesn't really do anything new already. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Sounds more American than Swedish, but not in a bad way.

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: Divine, 4th of July

Indie rock, folk. Ni fu ni fa.

Not bad

This album seems to have some sort of identity crisis as it tends to go back and forth between folk rock and alternative. The singer has his own drawbacks talent wise but as far as the composition of the whole album you have a song with harder instrumentals a fast tempo then a snare drum my folk song and a quick paced song with horns and intense guitar work. It was a bit unfocused while also just lacking in talent. 5.8/10

Swedish folksy indie rock that reminds me of the Mountain Goats. Seems like this band never got much traction outside of Europe or even their home country, but I think they deserve more of a fair shake! This album isn't extraordinarily good or anything groundbreaking, but it was fun enough. I think sometimes you need slightly obscure things like this to keep the mind sharp. It's nice to see the user's list get a little exploratory, if a bit average. CONTENDER FOR THE LIST: Too niche, I'm afraid.

Felt like very generic mid 2000/2010's indie rock-pop blah. It was fine, but nothing new or that exciting.

I'd think you'd gain more from a Neutral Milk Hotel listen, but this is alright.

I quite enjoyed today’s ten a penny album, whose only point of difference is opening with the saddest squeezebox I’ve ever heard.

Couldn't get a handle on it. If you said it's joyful and melodic and inventive I couldn't argue. But if you also said it somehow doesn't stick in the brain and teeters dangerously on ... and then over ... the precipice of indie-whiny turn of the century Pitchfork slobbering-while-twirling-one's-thumb-in-their-own-ass bitchy rock you'd also be correct. The only true shocker perhaps is that they are Swedish and not from, say, Omaha, Nebraska. 4/10 2 stars IMO: Belonged in the book? In no way at all. No

This was quaint or something like that. Not really understanding why it's on the list, but I'm sure it's meaningful in some sort of way. Just not really for me.

It was inoffensive but didn’t get he in the feels.

unhappy beginnings

They're Swedish, I guess that differentiates them enough because the sound they're putting out sounds like every other pop record from the early 00s 2/5

This wants to be Aeroplane Flies Over the Sea sooooo badly.