{"product_id":"molly-nilsson-un-american-activities-lp-1","title":"Molly Nilsson 'Un-American Activities' LP","description":"\u003cp\u003eUn-American Activities is the 11th studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in California at the former home of writer, poet, and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany, Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn album of experimentation, genre-mashing, and above all, Nilsson’s instantly recognizable melodic skill and empathy. It continues the songwriter’s explorations of power, freedom, oppression, and its opposing force, a love unbound.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space, and time to challenge her practice and take her music into new territory.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was among the very first to be declared an \"enemy of the state\" by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson’s best work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt is also a double-pointed poison pen letter: a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an acknowledgment of the promise it always offers but never fulfills.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAlong with the novel use of color and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of new techniques, genres, and timbres new to Molly Nilsson’s music in evidence, 16 years into her music career.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn Jackboots Return is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what’s the timeframe we’re talking about? Is this the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe beat is picked up on The Communist Party, Nilsson’s deepest bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 80s music, and Vogue-era Madonna.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Beauty Of The Duty does to pounding Electro what Nilsson’s last album Extreme did to Metal: subsume it into the Molly Nilsson aesthetic. It goes hard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile Un-American Activities finds Nilsson experimenting, creating instinctive music on a first-thought-best-thought basis, there are still “classic” Molly moments liberally spread throughout.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eExcalibur feels like the Molly of old, an absolute star of a chorus refrain smudged with the Vaseline of fuzz and hope. Red Telephone is wide-eyed, slathered in reverb and chorus effects, distorted with soaring melody, a heart-tugger that tugs the body upwards to the heavens with each evolving wave.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGlistening digital tones wash through the album, providing a Y2K etherealness to Nilsson’s audacious Stars and Stripes reference to Wetcheeks.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePerhaps the album’s standout, however, is Palestine (Somewhere Over The Rainbow), which is suffused with empathy, solidarity, and in referencing the classic socialist-penned canon song from The Wizard Of Oz, speaks directly to the tradition of fighting oppression with full hearts of hope. What activity could be more “American” than that?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCondition: New\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLabel: Night School\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Forte","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58049303380355,"sku":"LSSN097","price":21.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0932\/6872\/files\/Screenshot2026-05-15at14.21.13.png?v=1778851294","url":"https:\/\/beartreerecords.com\/products\/molly-nilsson-un-american-activities-lp-1","provider":"Bear Tree Records","version":"1.0","type":"link"}