Irene was a collective of musicians from Göteborg, Sweden, that created quite some buzz around the world during an intense period of time between 2005 and 2008. The leader of the pack, Tobias Isaksson aka Bobby, had written some west coast inspired songs for fun and in 2005 he gathered a bunch of friends to do a live show at legendary venue Pustevik. They all had so much fun they stuck around. By the autumn of 2005 Irene was an octet with semi-permanent members. Shortly after that the record label Labrador signed the band.
When MySpace’s first success ruled the social medias Irene were a big international act with indie pop measures. Carrieer peaks includes massive early hype in Sweden with 16 weeks as #1 on the chart of The Cricket, sold out shows in pop clubs in London, a support tour for I’m From Barcelona, Pitchfork praise in the USA and in Spain the band was on best of the year lists in Rockdeluxe and did sold out tours and even a show at Primavera Sound. They even played Eurosonic in The Netherlands.
The debut, Apple Bay, released in 2006, was an upbeat, super-short, 24 minute tribute to the 60’s sound with most instruments recorded live. It was licensed in The USA, Australia, Thailand and Taiwan and distributed all over the world. Tours of Scandinavia, England, France, Spain and Germany followed. In 2007 the second long player Long Gone Since Last Summer was released. New tours of Europe were undertaken, but keeping the big collective together was too hard in the long run. They aimed for a trilogy but fell on the threshold as both Tobias and the bass player Christian moved to Stockholm. It became virtually impossible to rehearse and the band was split up.
The members are still active in various high profile constellations. Some of them play with critically acclaimed Joel Alme and Tobias is a solo artist under the name Azure Blue.
