Of course, the current situation stopped all touring actions for THE PICTUREBOOKS, but the restless and hardworking combo let no time pass to be creative and to write new music.

As they already gained a lot of reputation and comfort from their work with Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders, the two wild animals asked long time friend and musical soul mate Dennis Lyxzén (Refused, The [International] Noise Conspiracy), to collaborate and co-write a special track the band had in their minds for a long time that would fit perfect to Dennis’ unique vocals.

The result is a furious and limitless landmark, which the band moves into unprecedented levels never heard before.

Lean back, relax and get paralyzed to “Here’s to Magic”

Dennis Lxyzén sums it up as follows:

”Collaborations are exciting. Specially in a time where the world seems to be standing still we need to reach out to our friends and create together.
I’ve know the guys in the Picturebooks for a while now. They did one of their first shows opening up for The (International) Noise Conspiracy in Berlin and we’ve been running into each other ever since.

This past summer they hit me up and asked if I wanted to be a part of a new song that they were working on. They were on a roadtrip in Sweden and wanted to come up to Umeå to hang out and create something. They sent me a bunch of demos and Claus (instigator, manager, general bad-ass) suggested one particular track for me. ’I think that number 16 would be perfect for you.’

Sometimes tracks just appear. I don’t even remember writing the words to it or even working to get the ideas where they needed to be. It was that easy. It felt done after I’ve listened to it like 3 times.

The guys came up and we met in my practice space to record and sometimes when things move to easy you get suspicious that there’s something wrong but as soon as we started recording, I knew that my first instinct were correct.
Music and creativity is mostly about hard work and sitting down and spending hours on it, just to get things exactly where you need them to be.

There’s no divine intervention or the magic of the bard; just hard work. But sometimes there’s a flow of words and ideas that’s just there. For the taking. This was one of those time; When the music and the words and melodies and ideas just gelled, instantly.

It’s rare that things do so. I’m very pleased that they asked me to be a part of this.
It’s in indeed some kind of Magic.”

Inspired from this session, the band is currently writing material for their 2019’s follow-up “The Hands Of Time”.