Swedish quartet Jens Hellgren (guitar), Kristofer Rönström (drums), Mattias Friberg (vocals/guitar) and Mathias Oldén (bass) initially began recording as Log, releasing their first album of atmospheric rock, Every Time A Bell Rings An Angel Gets Its Wings, in 2002 via the Bad Taste label. An enforced name change, however, resulted in the album being withdrawn. Adding an extra ‘h’ to their moniker, Logh re-issued their epic and introspective debut via UK label Must Destroy, home of the Darkness. This re-issue offered a second chance to bathe in the album’s languorous guitars and emotive vocals. The Swedish quartet have overt precedents in the American alt rock of Low, Death Cab For Cutie, Slint and Seam, as well as Sigur Rós and Pink Floyd’s expansive rock. Like these bands, Logh can sound fatigued and sombre, and lyrics such as ‘They said he’d been in for quite a while/When they found him by the riverside’ (‘Lookalike’) are endearingly succinct, seemingly looking to death, alienation, and existences as outsiders as preoccupations. Surprisingly, the band says they did not take the album title from Frank Capra’s classic movie It’s A Wonderful Life but from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Although Logh dismissed Every Time A Bell Rings An Angel Gets Its Wings as their student record, the album nevertheless sounds restrained and neatly poised and never cloyingly sweet nor predictably melodramatic.