Miss Maria and Co. recently performed in London's Leicester Square and XFM were good enough to record the whole session and have now made an EP available through iTunes. This cover of one of my favourite 80s songs was included in the set. Ida Maria - Blister in the Sun
You can stream a couple of other live tracks from the performance here.
A few weeks ago I had the chance to see Ida Maria for free. So I did. And it was great.
The group is technically from Stockholm but is fronted by Norwegian Ida Maria Børli Sivertsen. The Guardian describes Ida Maria's sound as "Sugarcubed Strokes or a less fluffy Cardigans", which is fair enough. Comparing bands to other bands is not my forté, so let's just roll with that description.
I had only heard a handful of tracks before I caught the Swedish group at Islington Academy, but those few songs were strong enough to pique my interest and at the reasonable price of free-ninety-nine, I was sold. As it turns out, the band has a great live show; Ida lost her freaking mind during most of the songs during the short set while shyly addressing the audience with typical Scandanavian politeness between numbers. By the time recent single 'Oh My God' made its appearance Ms. Sivertsen had already collapsed in convulsions at various points, thrown microphone stands and flung her guitar around stage. I later read that at a previous show she cracked her ribs so badly she couldn't walk for a month, and another time head-butted a guitar with such force that blood gushed down her head for the rest of the gig. In any case, her histrionics at the Academy didn't distract from the music and the crowd ate it up.
Oh My God was released as a single on October 1st and the video was made available on November 22nd.
