aBLe

Able, a Swedish indie pop group, came together in 1993 at Uppsala University, where singers and guitarists Johan Gille and Lotta Nyblad initiated the project and were later joined by guitarist Anders Nilsson, bassist Bo Larses, multi-instrumentalist Erik Hellström, and drummer Jakob Frodell. Their debut album, Prestigeless Lovesounds, appeared in 1996 after they inked a deal with the Harry Lime imprint. Gille and Nyblad's romantic relationship ended the next fall, throwing the band into disarray even as the pair kept composing fresh tunes; the resulting country-tinged tracks sat unreleased when Harry Lime declared bankruptcy. North of No South, their subsequent well-known label, suffered identical misfortune, yet Able eventually secured a contract with the U.S. independent Blackbean and Placenta Tape Club, which put out those recordings as Lost Love Songs toward the end of 1999.