Mascots

Between 1964 and 1968 the Mascots, a Swedish group of the sixties, released roughly twenty singles and two LPs, placing five of those 45s inside the national Top Ten. Although the members composed much of their own material, nearly all of it closely echoed British Invasion pop, leaving the band—as was true of virtually every Swedish act of the period—unheard in English-speaking territories. Those searching for lightweight yet occasionally appealing pseudo-Merseybeat will encounter both enjoyable and somewhat ungainly examples in the Mascots’ catalog. The ultra-catchy, close-harmony track “Words Enough to Tell You” stands out as a highlight of the style; it reached #6 in Sweden in 1965 and later appeared on Searchin’ for Shakes, the most widely circulated anthology of Swedish 1960s rock, and is therefore the recording most likely to be known outside Sweden. None of their other sides matched that standard, though “A Sad Boy,” another Swedish Top Ten entry, along with a handful of additional mid-1960s cuts, delivered passable mock Merseybeat. The 1966 single “I Want to Live” showed the group could adopt a tougher, stranger approach and has surfaced on several freakbeat compilations, yet they never revisited that direction. Their English, the sole language in which they sang, was less assured than that of some other Swedish bands; when this shortcoming combined with corny Nordic-folk-tinged Merseybeat on early recordings and bland middle-of-the-road pop-folk-rock on their late-1960s releases, any compilation of their work becomes uneven and difficult to hear straight through.