I absolutely love ISOLA- I have NEVER tired of it... have owned it since 1998. I think it's become a sound track for much of my life! i was surprised by this band and I highly recommended this album.

I would get the Dom Andra title they have which is in their native language, but I think it still sounds really good. I personally like the track "FF" on that disc.

Kent is largely unheard, and that's really the only reason only few of us got to enjoy this masterpiece here in the US. Their Isola album, realeased in the US from Sweden in 1998, rivaled British acts similar to Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, and US bands like Smashing Pumpkins. But besides maybe small doses of it played on cable TV's ALTERNATIVE stations, several years after it's release, it went unplayed on the US radio dials. And that's just awful, because it was every music lover's right to hear this album, and many of Rock's faithful were unjustly denied the beauty and genius Kent offers on Isola.

If it's helpful, you might draw a comparison to lead singer Jocke's voice by mixing that of two other Rock Gods...Yorke and Corgan together. The music backdrop to his voice often stunning art, too. This album's vibe seems like the instrumental minds that drove Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead made an album together. Yes, it's original as well, yet somehow slightly familar. I read on their website the sounds they keep and produce as music on their albums is only the music which gives Jocke chills. I would say that listening to this album will cause you the same...chills. Even after you've listened to it hundreds of times over.

No matter the cost, buy any English version of any album they make!!!

Kent is, without a doubt something completely unique. Jocke has the vocals of a dead man, so to speak, cold, pale and unforgiving, but while the point is made painfully clear there could be little left to be desired. The entire album is sung through languid smoke, through the wintry days of the north. The songs have an overall sense of disappointment or maybe more the sense of causing disappointment than nothing else. In the beginning Lifesavers and If you were here kick off with a sort of repetitive air, trying to convince you that there is hope left but soon OWC and Celsius show you the ruins of a doomed relationship and the songs flow onward to represent something much more realistic than you'll ever find. Kent has managed to capture a balance in its lyrics; the songs aren't about endless or perfect love, but of human situations.

And of course, in the end, after this almost desperate cynicism, after the last beats of Glider die out and you half expect the CD to be over, begins the masterpiece of 747. It's sad, melancholic, simple, utterly logical and it grabs you, slowly at first but then growing momentum and gliding off almost endlessly. 7 minutes and 47 seconds suddenly seem short.

Largely ignored in the USA (except for some college radio stations), Kent's album Isola is, five years after its release, still one of the best cd's I've ever heard. There aren't many cd's that have been made in the last ten years that make you feel like you've rediscoverd music...that there's still something beautiful being created out there. Belle & Sebastian's "If You're Feeling Sinister" and Bright Eye's last two albums have also had that kind of effect on me. Kent's sound is both sonic and ethereal with lyrics that are surprisingly good, especially considering that the English version is translated from Swedish and still comes across with more intelligence and relevance than 90% of american musicians. Curiously, Kent's follow-up to Isola, entitled Hagnesta Hill, sounds older and less mature...though there are many tracks that make the album worth buying. Isola really is worth every penny...if only to discover that music can transcend and still rock these days.