Tagged: Sweden

The people who make Jeppson's Malort, a harshly bitter spirit that's consumed in shots or cocktails, don't mind that their product makes people grimace. Instead, they celebrate it.

Carl Jeppson Co., a Chicago company, has built a minor social media empire around malort's "brutal" flavor; one winner of its slogan contest described the drink as "turning taste buds into taste foes for generations."

The four main members of the Swedish band The Amazing play in many other successful music acts (Dungen, et al), some of which are shared projects. The overlap makes for obvious chemistry within this experimental, genre-bending folk-rock supergroup.

On its most recent album, 2011's Gentle Stream, The Amazing jumps around quite a bit, delving into psychedelic folk, pop and acoustic rock. Here, the group plays songs from its latest album and sits down with David Dye to discuss its grandiose name and musical influences.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. In Sweden, Anna Erickson got a letter accepting her into the local preschool. It had gone out to everyone in town born in '07. Great, except for one detail: Anna was born in 1907. So the 105-year-old won't be showing up to class. In New York, the elegant Waldorf-Astoria experienced a blast from the past this week when a man returned one of the hotel's silver-trimmed teapots, pilfered back in the 1930s. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.