Aldrig av med varandra [English translation]

I dreamed three chords in Krakow

When they called and told (me)

I dreamed three chords in Krakow

I thought we got1

I thought we never got, we never got rid of each other2

We never got

We became an amusement park that never closed

We became rum-soaked3 nights

Nothing to write home about

We became the blind leading the blind

We became the one who runs astray wins

But we never got rid of each other

We never got rid of each other

We never got rid of each other

We never got rid of each other

We got ourselves connected4, never missed a procession

Followed the manual

Lived down by the race track5

You and I has become skilled6

You and I has become skilled

Knew all the tricks

God save acid7 the seventeenth of May8

God save sleet on Karl Johan9

We never got, thought we never got

We never got rid of each other

We never got, we never got

We never got rid of each other

Never

Later when I have smashed every window

Later when no (brick) wall could be demolished

Later when we ran our separate ways10

As far as we could

Nothing, nothing

Only things that happened

Only things that happened

But we never got rid of each other

We never got rid of each other

We never got, we got

We never got

1. In the Swedish original, this is a fragment of the line below, but because of the different word order in English, it appears to have the opposite meaning.2. In Swedish "blev aldrig av med" can mean both something positive, as in "Det fanns många ficktjuvar, men jag blev aldrig av med min plånbok" ("There were many pickpockets, but I never lost my wallet") or something negative, as in "Han blev aldrig av med sina dåliga vanor" ("He never got rid of his bad habits"). I'm not sure what the intended meaning is here, but for the time being I've chosen to interpret it in the latter way, which I realize could be improbable, but the sentence fragments are much easier to show this way.3. Or "rum-drenched".4. In the meaning of connecting to a network.5. A race track for animal or athlete racing, not vehicles. Not athletes either though; that would probably be described as "löparbanan".6. In the Swedish original the line is grammatically incorrect by letting the adjective stay in singular even though it talks about two people, but in English the adjective doesn't change like that. Instead I let the verb incorrectly be in the singular to reflect this. Never using the plural forms is actually a feature of some northern Swedish dialects, but not Thåström's Stockholm dialect, so that's hardly the reason.7. Could either refer to the chemical term or the drug, just like in English.8. 17 May is the Norwegian Constitution Day, which is the national day of Norway.9. Karl Johans gate is the main street of the city of Oslo, Norway.10. The tense changes between these three lines of the original, and the translation follows suit.

• Artist:Joakim Thåström
• Album:Centralmassivet