A weirdly awkward band

Two high school girls with bad hair-cuts and ugly, second-hand clothes. Really bad video clips. Lyrics about middle-age depressions and death. Acoustic guitars and hand clapping. Very awkward live performances.

Yes, that's Raymond & Maria. Or that *was* Raymond & Maria. I sincerely hope this absurd band no longer exists, although I admit they enjoyed a certain cult status in Sweden around 2004. I mean, I almost fell from my chair when a MTV-like music channel in Sweden showed the video to their song "Ingen vill veta var du köpt din tröja". Geezus, was that a contrast to the cool American and American-inspired performers...

Since Raymond & Maria (quite deliberately) only made occasional live performances for TV, all kinds of strange rumors about the band flourished. They were said to be named after a swingers' club in Stockholm, and the guitars and hand claps reminded many people of Christian revivalist meetings. Thus, according to one rumor, the band was connected to the so-called Bride of Christ, the leader of an extreme "Christian" cult at Knutby outside Uppsala. The Knutby cult made national headlines when several of the members were murdered at the instigation of another cult leader!

Sometimes I wonder if Raymond & Maria themselves were behind all the rumors...

This is apparently an English-language album with this weirdly awkward band, but the songs I've heard so far simply don't work in English. Besides, some of the video clips on Youtube look professional...

No, in my mind, the *real* Raymond & Maria were the two ultra-uncool girls that took the stage in 2004, singing in Swedish about the sufferings of the bored, middle-class white collar employee from an almost Buddhist perspective.

"Fight Club", you're dead! This is the true protest against alienation and consumerism, ha ha.