This trio out of Copenhagen has been making a name for themselves ever since their pre-pandemic debut album Noise & Romance. Their sophomore album, Wrestler, pierced the heart of pandemic times in 2021. Now they’re back with a post-pandemic (it’s pretty much over, right? Right?!) album that fuses together all of the ruckus and gravitas with plenty of ethereal moments of pure bliss. The Entrepreneurs are on top form on Sky Forever.
The title track opens the album kindly with plucked chords on a bass (perhaps a baritone guitar?) and a vocal performance that sounds how a warm embrace feels. It ushers you in from the cold. The song swells and soars between beautiful crescendos and pithy plateaus. You move lightheartedly through the clouds up until the final minute of the track when the skies darken and acidic rain pours down.
This dark anxious energy phase-shifts into “Find A Face”. The drums come banging in and it feels like the record has just started. The dynamics are carefully crafted though. The verse chills out in a way reminiscent of Autolux or old school Tame Impala so the chorus can erupt with ‘No one’s innocent/Ain’t got time for it.’ The bridge section features these saccharine falsettos that, when combined with the driving drums and noisy guitars, feels like something off Wavves‘ King of the Beach. It’s an exceptional track, and at barely over three minutes, what have you got to lose?
Given the shoutouts so far, you might not expect the Tool-tinged sounds on “The Drugs That You Found.” Or, for that matter, a Filter comparison for the vocal delivery on the chorus and the industrial percussion during the outro. Well, expect the unexpected on Sky Forever, because The Entrepreneurs aren’t drawing from a narrow well of influences here.
Case in point, the very next song, “Stuck In Change”, carries a quality to it that straddles the fence between Sigur Rós and Alice in Chains. There’s not even supposed to be a fence there! But the band borrows the best complimentary colors from both and winds up with an angelic piece of music. From the opening acoustic guitar chords to the ending flurry of ambient noise and guitar pedal alchemy, it just works.
“Ether” opens with an interesting drum beat and a guitar that sounds like its trudging through a swamp and seeing double vision. Fans of Young Widows will surely be here for it. And fans of album cohesion will be delighted by the vocal refrain ‘Sky forever yours‘ that guides the track. This little nod back to the album title only makes the vibe of the whole project that much more unified and potent.
This potency will have been evident for anyone who heard the first single leading up to this album, “Search for No One”. The guitars are straight up feral, the drums know the power of negative space, and the manically shouted hook makes for easy onboarding too. Bet it slays at the band’s live shows. Then the unexpected softer second act of the song where they sing, ‘The grown men will cry‘. That refrain will live rent-free in your brain for quite some time to come.
From here, the band offers us the most delicate and intimate track on the album, “Bedstefar”. Danish for grandfather, it’s a fitting title for a song with such a presence. Because at that age, a man lives just between wisdom and death. Similarly, the song lives in meditative peace at first; akin to “Daydreaming” off Radiohead‘s last record, A Moon Shaped Pool. Then, electronic percussion swells in and steals something that we’re left to mourn. The way ‘Oh man‘ is repeated at the end of the song is really devastating.
This is not unlike the heavy emotional weight carried on the chorus of the closing track, “Young Again, Pt. II”. The build and release hits you in the gut with something sharp like Bright Eyes but with the sonic strength of HOLY FAWN.
‘You return to throw it away / You’re hurt from kissing on stage / Sunburned but the kids are okay / Some day you’ll learn to let go of the pain.‘
It’s not hard to leave wet-eyed from musical moments like these. Thankfully, the band, offers us again a softer second act for the song. A plethora of peaceful acoustic guitars pluck away like lutes at the gates to heaven, then the rhythm section returns to give us our final send off. A handkerchief dabbing our eyes.
So yeah, The Entrepreneurs have put together another fantastic album. If you’re a fan of guitar music that doesn’t shy away from coloring outside the lines, then you’ll absolutely want to make time to get lost in this. Tone and grit are matched one-to-one with great songwriting and thematic depth. Furthermore, the range of influences on here is as broad as the sky. It’s quite literally Sky Forever.
