They may have formed in Gothenburg in 2006, but in Graveyard’s world it’s forever 1972.
They provide quite the alluring, denim-clad journey back in time on Innocence & Decadence, and the album couldn’t be better titled, as they kick off in a frantic fug of Led Zeppelin-spattered horniness for the gloriously dirty Magnetic Shrunk, frontman Joakim Nilsson begging a well-practised woman to ‘Bite me, spank me baby, pull my hair.’
It’s feral, filthy and furious, and electrifying enough to shock even the most casual listener. From there they run the gamut from dusty, Polaroid-hued classic rock (The Apple And The Tree), True Detective-style blues (Exit 97) and Joakim living out his Jim Morrison fantasies in the Doorsy Can’t Walk Out.
The innocent side of the equation comes in the form of Too Much Is Not Enough, a gorgeous slab of old-school soul, and closing track Stay For A Song, which weeps with a Jeff Buckley-delicate loneliness. For some bands ‘retro’ means nothing more than a surface facsimile of a time and place, but Graveyard are different; they dig deep.
