A Smile And A Ribbon – Den Lille Havfrue (Cloudberry) 7″

Product Description

Swedish favourites A Smile and a Ribbon are back with two absolutely lovely songs!

Did you ever hear the story about The Little Mermaid? After saving a prince from drowning she falls in love with him, and in order to be a human she sacrifices her angelic voice. She only has a very short time for the prince to fall in love with her or she will die…

When A Smile and a Ribbon recorded Den Lille Havfrue, which is Danish for The Little Mermaid, they wanted to make sounds that would make you feel as if you were under the sea, and that’s just what they did! This beautiful little gem of a song is the pearl you can only find in the prettiest oysters in the deepest of oceans. The B side, Sommer, is a melodic story of feeling lethargic and fed up with summer, full of exotic instruments such as the güiro, the kazoo and the melodica. Rather than making you dread summer, this song is bound to make you look forward to beach parties and sunshine!

So, what happened to the little mermaid in the end? As the story unfolds she doesn’t get the prince and so she dies, but she tried her utmost and so instead she gains an eternal soul. That’s a bit like this record: you’ll want these songs to last forever and you’ll never want to remove this 7” from your turn- table!

A plaintive harpsichord* intro that sounds not unlike the beginning of the very song from which ASAAR take their name kicks off this beautifully wobbly ballad. Indebted to fifties doo-wop, early rock’n’roll and (as always) sixties girl groups, ‘Den Lille Havfrue’ is full of talky breakdowns, marimba, and slightly off-key backing vocals. An utterly charming, totally brilliant single. Order the 7″ or download for free here – BABY HONEY

*possibly dulcimer.

Tracklist:

Den Lille Havfrue
Sommer

Cloudberry 1017