Introduction

LIFE (1995)
1) Carnival; 2) Gordon's Gardenparty; 3) Daddy's Car; 4) Pikebubbles; 5) Tomorrow; 6) Beautiful One; 7) Traveling With Charley; 8) Fine; 9) Sunday Circus Song; 10) Hey! Get Out Of My Way; 11) Closing Time.
Although in most respects Life seems to be a fairly predictable sequel to Emmerdale, it takes a fairly more upbeat and optimistic tone than its predecessor. The idea is that "life is a carnival", so, naturally, the first song is titled ʽCarnivalʼ, the last song is ʽClosing Timeʼ, and in between you also have ʽSunday Circus Songʼ, ʽGardenpartyʼ, and other tunes that seem to be about having fun and feature mostly positive titles (ʽBeautiful Oneʼ, ʽFineʼ). Of course, it's all about subtext and irony: most of the verse lyrics and melodic overtones are still complaining and melancholy. This is not the kind of band, after all, which you'd expect to suddenly turn around and go all freaky-happy on you in hopes of expanding its teenage audience.
Whether they are frowning or smiling in their melancholy, though, matters nowhere near as much as whether they can maintain the same level of appeal in their hooks and the same level of taste in their arrangements — and in that respect, Life is easily as strong as its predecessor. In fact, it is usually rated higher than its predecessor, but that is mainly for publicity reasons: Life was their first LP to truly go international, and it also went international in a bastardized version, with three or four (differently in US and European editions) of the songs replaced by five songs from Em­mer­dale. So, for most critics, this was their first glimpse of the band, and they received a repre­sentative mix of happy-sad Cardigans with sad-sad Cardigans.
We here are looking at the original Swedish version, though, which is mostly all happy-sad, and maybe a little more monotonous, but also a little more consistent as a result. ʽCarnivalʼ kicks things off with a little bossa nova, as befits the title; however, it is used more like a background setting for the main theme, reflected in the chorus — "I will never know, cause you will never show, come on and love me now", this is Euridice turning tables on her own black Orpheus, with unclear results. Then we get a change of the scene, and instead of the carnival, we have ʽGordon's Gardenpartyʼ with its vaudevillian, but slightly funkified atmosphere, and Nina in her Marilyn Monroe emploi — there is not a single word in the lyrics that would suggest anything but a party atmosphere, and yet the past tense, the sighing, the flutes, and the chimes all make it clear that the whole thing either never happened, or will never happen again.
Yes, the irony of the Life title is that nothing here is about life, really — it's either all about a cer­tain life that was (but we are not sure), or a life that could be (but we will never have it), or a life that couldn't even be (but no one can stop us from dreaming about it a little). ʽDaddy's Carʼ is a gloomy little travelogue-in-the-past, namechecking European cities with as much abandon as the musical transition from chorus back to verse suddenly quotes the desperate chords of ʽI Want You (She's So Heavy)ʼ. ʽTomorrowʼ is a beautiful combination of upbeat electric pop with a psy­chedelic chiming melody and more ruminations on the issue of loneliness and how to overcome it. And only ʽPikebubblesʼ is just a piece of giggly absurdism, throwing you off your guard with a whacky time signature (like a really hobbling waltz) and di-diddley-dums.
The record only seriously changes tone once: ʽHey! Get Out Of My Wayʼ, like the title suggests, introduces a pinch of anger and aggressive feminism, as if, for once, the band decided to take its cues from Blondie rather than Julie London — although even here, Nina cannot make herself sound really pissed. Instead, her "get out of my way!" treats the ex-lover as more of an annoying housefly than anything, and she sounds too bored and disgusted to even bother picking up a swatter. It's funny, and a nice extra touch to complete the psychological portrait of Life's heroine before we launch into the epic ʽClosing Timeʼ — which, instead of playing it safe and being a two-minute little goodbye, goes through several different sections with different tempos and dif­ferent stories and ends in ʽHey Judeʼ mode... not really, because after the last tinklings of the acoustic riff fade away, there's a few more minutes of muffled noises, complete silence, The Lost Chord, and an acoustic coda. If that ain't creativity, no hopes for Sweden.
I do not feel that the songs here are as consistently amazing as the ones on Emmerdale, but the reaction would probably depend on which of the two you hear first — or maybe it's just that this atmosphere of intentionally-fake happiness sometimes gets to me. But with every next listen, they become more and more endearing, and ʽClosing Timeʼ could arguably be described as the peak of their songwriting powers — so another major thumbs up here anyway.
FIRST BAND ON THE MOON (1996)
1) Your New Cuckoo; 2) Been It; 3) Heartbreaker; 4) Happy Meal II; 5) Never Recover; 6) Step On Me; 7) Lovefool; 8) Losers; 9) Iron Man; 10) Great Divide; 11) Choke.
This is the one that has ʽLovefoolʼ on it — the song that made the band in the eyes of mass Euro­pean and American audiences, because, let's face it, if there is a pop-rock band that consists of several male musicians and one blonde female singer, it's Blondie, right? But no band is really Blondie until it has a genuine Blondie mega-hit, and so ʽLovefoolʼ was selected by mass tastes as their ʽHeart Of Glassʼ, with which it does share some things in common: the light-headed, bitter-hearted attitude, the disco danceability, the funky riffs, the sweet sweet catchiness. And it's a nice song alright, but for someone like me, who totally missed it in the Nineties, it is not even the best, or the most memorable song on this album, let alone in the Cardigans songbook as a whole.
Even without ʽLovefoolʼ, you could tell that the band is trying to modernize its sound here: ʽYour New Cuckooʼ opens things up with a strong neo-disco beat, and throughout the album there are plenty more signs of moving away from the relaxed, folk- and jazz-influenced atmospheres of the first two albums and into more dance-oriented, contemporary territory. However, this trouble­some «commercialization» is only superficial. Not only are the actual melodies as strong as ever, but the band's bittersweet romance attitude, as personified by Nina's singing technique, remains exactly the same as it used to be. Consequently, this is one of those rare cases where a sellout is not really a sellout — it is simply a matter of becoming able to sell precisely the same thing that, earlier on, you were not able to sell. For technical, unimportant reasons.
Besides, other than ʽLovefoolʼ and ʽYour New Cuckooʼ (whose saccharine disco chorus is admi­rably turned into a tongue-in-cheek expression by Nina's sarcastic "let's come together, me and you... your new cuckoo" delivery and the grumbly guitar riff), the only number presented as a modern dance track (slow trip-hop style) is, would you know it, another Black Sabbath cover. Unlike ʽSabbath Bloody Sabbathʼ, which they really nailed — unveiled, in fact — as the senti­mental pop song that it had always been in the first place, this take on ʽIron Manʼ is less succes­s­ful. They do a good job jazzifying the classic riff, and Nina's scat singing on the outro is hilarious (especially when she does that little «scratching turntables» routine), but the lyrics just don't fit in. More like ʽGingerbread Manʼ than ʽIron Manʼ, if you know what I mean. No purpose to it, really, other than a "let's really go down in history like that crazyass Sabbath cover band" sort of state­ment. Which, on the other hand, is also respectable in its own strange way.
But then there's just lots and lots and lots of other good songs on top of this. ʽNever Recoverʼ is a fast, upbeat, snappy post-Beatles / post-Bangles power-pop gem, with a resplendent chorus full of energy and sunshine. ʽBeen Itʼ should be primarily respected for the sexy-seductive instrumental and vocal melody of its chorus, and only secondarily for the lyrics ("ooh, she calls herself a whore! that's so Madonna! this is, like, disturbing!") — actually, she makes bitter fun of former lover boy rather than degrading herself, and all the guitar riffs sound like whips across poor un­fortunate male skin and flesh. Did I ever use the word "misandrist" yet in a review? Probably not; well, 1996 seems like the right time to start.
Slow, moody, haunting tunes? Yes, still plenty of them. The pretty moonlight waltz of ʽHeart­breakerʼ. Lounge sounds still pursue us with ʽGreat Divideʼ (chimes, strings, treated guitars, tempo changes, mood changes — there's quite a lot going on in these three minutes). ʽChokeʼ, closing the album, is impossible to describe in genre terms: it combines elements of alt-rock, R&B, and jazz, and on top of it, there is the riff from ʽIron Manʼ! Somehow, it slipped and fell through the cracks, landing on top of the final track and finding it comfortable enough to stay there. Gee, these whacky rover riffs.
As you can understand, this is yet another major thumbs up: the band's third melodically strong, atmospherically captivating, technically inventive album in a row. And I'm sure that, as long as you do not asso­ciate it exclusively with ʽLovefoolʼ, you'll be all right.

GRAN TURISMO (1998)
1) Paralyzed; 2) Erase/Rewind; 3) Explode; 4) Starter; 5) Hanging Around; 6) Higher; 7) Marvel Hill; 8) My Favou­rite Game; 9) Do You Believe; 10) Junk Of The Hearts; 11) Nil.
Well, things change. Although the band's fourth record was made in the same Stockholm studio and produced by the same Tore Johansson, the sound has definitely... evolved. There is a clear drive here to make it more modern, by shifting a lot of emphasis over to electronics, drum machi­nes, and trendy trip-hoppy rhythms — forget the lounge jazz and retro-pop of yesterday, here we are trying to peep through the window of tomorrow. Does the music suffer? Hell yes, it does, al­though it also has to do with the overall mood in the studio: it's as if they all spent way too much time listening to Portishead, and now all they can think of are these slow, smoky, electronically enhanced grooves where atmosphere counts more than melodic hooks. (Not that Portishead did not have their fair share of melodic hooks — but if you are influenced by someone like that, first thing you're gonna try to emulate is the texture, not the chord progressions).
Anyway, upon overcoming the initial disappointment, once the bitter fog has cleared, it was quite a consolation to understand that on the whole, the melodic skills of Svensson and Svenigsson did not truly deteriorate (although, curiously, Svenigsson is credited only on two of the tracks; most everything else is co-written by Svensson with Nina), and that Nina's potential for seduction may be fully realized in an electronic setting just as well. Maybe that unique Cardigans magic is really no more, but this is still high quality pop music. I think most of the attention in 1998 was diverted to the controversial music video for ʽMy Favourite Gameʼ (ooh, road violence! blood! car crashes! censorship! real scary!); however, 1998 is long past us and we are now free again to just enjoy the music without the outdated MTV perspective.
ʽMy Favourite Gameʼ is actually a good song that does not forget to incorporate a strong hook, in the form of a nagging, «whimpering» three-note guitar riff that agrees beautifully with Nina's melancholic vocals — although behind that generall melancholy, there are few secrets to discover. The second single, ʽErase/Rewindʼ, with a funkier, more danceable groove and an intentionally more robotic vocal performance, was a slightly bigger hit in the UK, but it's actually less impres­sive because it's so monotonous.
Actually, the best songs here tend to be the slowest ones: they also take the most time to grow on you, but it is worth the wait. ʽExplodeʼ, for instance — what a fabulous vocal part, where each accented syllable is drawn out with so much eroticism, even if the lyrics do not formally have much to do with sexual tension (more like "explode or implode" is a metaphor for a drug ad­dic­tion, though the lyrics are deliberately ambiguous). Not much else by way of melody, but the somber organ and the jangly guitar (or is that a harpsichord part? hard to tell with those produc­tion technologies) provide a nice sonic blanket for the vocals. ʽHigherʼ is formally classifiable as adult contemporary — but that's a really soulful, sensitive adult contemporary chorus out there. It takes a special talent to sing a line like "we'll make it out of here" so that it combines both the op­timistic hope of getting out of here and the firm knowledge that we will never get out of here at the same time, and Nina Persson does have it.
Electronics and adult contemporary aside, they even managed to sneak a song here that would later attract the attention of the Deftones — ʽDo You Believeʼ is not exactly nu-metal, but it rocks harder than anything else on here, with industrial-style distortion of the riff and a «brutal» coda where the soft-psychedelic echoing of the chorus contrasts with the riff put on endless repetition. The lyrical message is the simplest on the album — "do you really think that love is gonna save the world? well, I don't think so" — and, as if in self-acknowledgement of the fact, it is also re­peated twice: yes, this whole record is about tragic endings, disappointments, and disillusion­ments, and sometimes they are going to shove it in your face quite openly. It's not very original, but it's honest, and as long as they still got musical ideas to back it up, it's okay with me.
So yes, Gran Turismo might essentially be qualified as Portishead-lite, but even if «lite» rhymes with «shite», this does not mean they're identical. The downfall of The Cardigans as a band with its own voice probably starts here, and as they add ʽErase/Rewindʼ to their hit collection, the number of people who know them for being providers of catchy, but faceless dance tracks begins to outnumber the number of people who know them for being wonderful musicians. But album-wise, in 1998 they were still playing a respectable game, so here is another thumbs up. And as far as combinations of guitars and electronica in pop music are concerned, this is still a lighter (and better) experience than, say, Madonna's Ray Of Light.
LONG GONE BEFORE DAYLIGHT (2003)
1) Communication; 2) You're The Storm; 3) A Good Horse; 4) And Then You Kissed Me; 5) Couldn't Care Less; 6) Please Sister; 7) For What It's Worth; 8) Lead Me Into The Night; 9) Live And Learn; 10) Feathers And Down; 11) 03.45: No Sleep.
Five years between albums may not make such a long time now as they did thirty years ago, but in the case of the Cardigans, they were crucial — Long Gone Before Daylight gives us an en­tire­ly different band, with that dreadfully punched-up word «maturation» flashing blue, red, or green, whichever you prefer. No more jazzy Black Sabbath covers, no more cheerful Beatlesque pop, and not even any more trip-hoppy or disco dance numbers. With Svensson now providing all of the music and Nina all of the lyrics, this is a slow, unexciting, introspective record that comes as close to generic «adult contemporary» as they ever did. It's not as if they are getting more psychological on your ass than before — it's just that your ass gets the gist of it far more sharply when it's sitting in your chair than when it's being distracted by all those chuggy-funky or giggly-pastoral dance rhythms of yesterday.
Of course, this still comes on as somewhat of a shock — unlike the classic «young» stage of the band, the songs no longer jump out at you with the same immediacy, and, in fact, the album would most probably sink on a purely instrumental level, because music-wise, it seems to be riding on a fairly straightforward alt-rock and alt-country foundation. Where it eventually catches up with you (me) is on the vocal level. A few listens into the whole sucker, it emerges as an ex­treme­ly intelligent and sentient record on the love-and-hate issue — the real thing, that is. It has all these subtle connections to the past (ʻAnd Then You Kissed Meʼ hearkens back not to one, but to two of The Crys­tals' hits, because there is a reference to ʻHe Hit Meʼ as well; ʻFor What It's Worthʼ does not accidentally coincide with the title of the Buffalo Springfield classic — although it actually includes the song title in the lyrics, un­like its predecessor), but it is an utterly modern record at heart, and the best thing about it, it is modern, clever, emotional, convincing, and it does all of that on a very humble, unassuming, unprovocative level. Which means, of course, that it did not seriously chart anywhere but in Sweden.
It is very easy to write the record as too long, too slow, too boring, and too clichéd, but... do me a favor and don't do this, okay? Instead, give Nina a chance, and she'll eventually turn this into a masterful soulful show for you. ʻCommunicationʼ starts off with the most ABBA-esque song on here, and the verse-chorus build-up is a perfect mix of tender sentimentality with quiet despera­tion (is the Swedish way, after all) — one might quibble that it is not very inventive to follow the call of "I don't know how to connect" with the response of "so I disconnect", but she's got such a... disconnecting way of saying that last word, it's pretty hard to think of a better ending.
The second song, ʻYou're The Stormʼ, amuses me to no end, because stylistically, it is precisely the kind of material that would soon win Taylor Swift her fame and fortune — sort of a neo-country rocker, starts out soft and slow, becomes loud and anthemic in the chorus, and even the lyrics, all based around a somewhat crude geopolitical love metaphor ("and if you want me, I'm your country"), kind of fit the bill. Except that ʻYou're The Stormʼ actually has an enthralling chorus, where modulation matters much more than loudness — the pitch change from "I like the sweet life and the silence" to "but it's the storm that I believe in" is true pop brilliance. It is true that lyrical lines like "come raise your flag upon me" or "come and conquer and drop your bombs" sound a little crude (not to mention that the song's timing, coming out right at the start of the Iraqi War, couldn't have been worse), but it's no hard crime to get a little carried away with a metaphor, and, after all, we don't cherish The Cardigans because of their lyrics (even if, word-wise, they are typically several notches above the ABBA level).
Everything after that comes on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, but the more I listen, the more I'm ready to take. Here's just a few moments: the plaintive vibe of "my heart can't carry much more" (ʻCouldn't Care Lessʼ); the quiet razor-sharpness of the "help me, I'm not feeling... okay" chorus conclusion (ʻPlease Sisterʼ); the way "for what it's worth I love you, and what is worse, I really do" moves up an octave from first chorus to last; the believable stubbornness in the "I live and I learn, yes I live and I learn" mantra; the sarcastic-tragic finale of "come to me, let's drown... come baby, let's drown in feathers and down" — it's all touching, inventive, and meaningful.
Nothing remains, really, except to reiterate the old fact about no musical genre being good or bad on its own, but everything depending upon the personalities behind it. Singer-songwriters come fairly cheap these days, and far more often than necessary, but Persson would probably make an excellent one (in fact, Long Gone Before Daylight is far more of a «singer-songwriter» record, genre-wise, than a «pop» record); and this is precisely the kind of album that manages to avoid both the «cheap thrill» pitfalls of fluffy country-pop à la Taylor Swift and the «musical bore­dom» pitfalls of, say, an Ani DiFranco. Yes, our acquaintance started out on a sour note, but in the end I'm perfectly happy to award it a strong thumbs up — and all you reviewers who panned it when it came out, well, you probably didn't even respect the three-listen rule.
SUPER EXTRA GRAVITY (2005)
1) Losing A Friend; 2) Drip Drop Teardrop; 3) Overload; 4) I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer; 5) Don't Blame Your Daughter; 6) Little Black Cloud; 7) In The Round; 8) Holy Love; 9) Good Morning Joan; 10) And Then You Kissed Me II.
I may be the only person left to like this album, but even I have a hard time defending it — it's quite similar to the previous one, but even slower, drearier, and (at least superficially) duller. At least Long Gone Before Daylight reinvented the band, for better or for worse; but Super Extra Gravity merely persists in that image, with yet another series of dark personal broodings over not particularly impressive pop melodies.
By this time, as we can already see from the Roxy Music-influenced album cover, it's really all about Nina — if her charm still works on you, you might forgive the uninventive arrangements and recycled chord sequences; if it does not, Super Extra Gravity will simply crush you to the ground, like it's supposed to, and bore you to death with its depressive formula. Personally, I am a believer, and I am still willing to take at least some of these songs at face value and see them as deeply personal and, occasionally, even unique artistic statements. But that's just me.
At the very least, ʻLosing A Friendʼ is a beautiful tune, and it's all Nina, meticulously building up passion from the quiet, pensive first verse to the tempestuous coda — she is a rare singer who can package anger and desperation in one go, and that final "oh no, oh no, I'm losing you... oh look at you look what you're wasting" is a perfect example of that double package. Instrumentally, the tune is just nice — pretty guitars and keyboards, rough electric guitar solo, everything tasteful but nothing too special. The voice part, however, is something else.
The problem is that it's just one song, and although Persson is consistently energetic and involved in these tunes, she rarely gives us that much «character development», if I may be allowed to use a stock banality. ʻI Need Some Fine Wineʼ, the first single from the album, once again sounds like any other alt-pop guitar-based song ever written, and I do love the lady's sarcastic aggression and all, but it is not enough to make the song really stick — unless the "good dog, bad dog" meta­phor somehow seems impressive to you, it's just one more attempt to say something meaningful on the issue of complicated personal relations between two ex-lovers. The second single, ʻDon't Blame Your Daughterʼ, was even slower and preachier, and its accusatory spirit is wasted on me; in fact, it sounds whiny, and that's never a good thing.
In fact, the worst thing with this record is that I simply have no wish to discuss any of the indivi­dual tunes. I still like how it all sounds (a very nice balance between acoustic and electric guitars, atmospheric electronics, natural percussion, etc.), I like to hear the sound of Persson's voice, always so reliable and so deep-reaching, and I can understand how they would want to put «soul» and «depth» before experimentation and unique personality, but the songs are simply not good enough to merit discussion.
To the best of my knowledge, the album was not intended as a swansong, and, in fact, after a long break the Cardigans eventually came back together in 2012, even if they have yet to write or re­cord anything new. But maybe they needn't, because Super Extra Gravity does work well as a swan song — in fact, that is probably the only capacity in which it works well, by letting us under­stand that the band has nothing left to say (there's even a song called ʻAnd Then You Kissed Me IIʼ!), even if it still has enough strength to say it with grace and dignity. It was a jolly good ride, though — through at least three different stages of existence, all of which had their own charms, with not a single genuine stinker in the lot. Then again, I guess 10-12 years is close to the optimal limit for a good band before it stagnates or goes artistically bankrupt, so here's hoping that these clever Swedes take their cue from their ABBA compatriots, and won't ruin it with their latter-day equivalent of something like Sur La Mer.

CAT POWER