Introduction

ON LAND AND IN THE SEA (1989)
1) Two Bites Of Cherry; 2) Baby Heart Dirt; 3) The Leader Of The Starry Skies; 4) I Hold My Love In My Arms; 5) The Duck And Roger The Horse; 6) Arnald; 7) Fast Robert; 8) Mare's Nest; 9) The Stench Of Honey; 10) Buds And Spawn; 11) The Safety Bowl; 12) The Ever So Closely Guarded Line.
Listening to this album, which many regard as the band's ultimate masterpiece, is pretty much the aural equivalent of going, at irregular, but immediate, intervals from 40mph to 80mph to 120mph to 80mph to 40mph to 80mph... you get my drift, and I have serious vestibular problems, too. In other words, it's cool, but... could you slow down, please? Oh, that's right, not slowing down is an integral part of being cool. Well then, like John Lennon said, "count me out... in".
No matter how many times I listen to this stuff, I cannot properly tell one song from another, for the simple reason that almost each of these songs is, in itself, three or four songs, cut up, mixed about, and re-spliced at random (or so it seems to the poor, undefended, naked ear). This is not something they invented on this album, of course — but this is where their song-twisting craft truly reaches its peak, and they juggle these melodies around with such energy and ease as if they all really understood the deep meaning of such juggling.
Unfortunately, this achievement of total perfection in the art of «pop trigonometry» has a nasty trade-off — the songs all collapse together in a flurry, blurry kaleidoscope of craziness that leaves little, if any, place for emotionality. Not even surrealist emotionality, where black is white and wrong is right — these songs are just convoluted hysterical blasts, awesome when taken in in small portions but really wearying down the potential listener (or the actual me) when swallowed all together in one go. Something like ʻThe Duck And Roger The Horseʼ, for instance, gallops along with tremendous force and makes great use of the collective power of hard rock chords and organ barrages, but when placed in between half a dozen songs on both sides that also tax your nerves to the extreme, the typical reaction might just be «enough, already!»
Exhausted and nerve-wracked, I find myself instinctively searching for something simple, repe­titive, unpretentious... and I kind of find it with ʻArnaldʼ, a triumphant power-pop tune that is al­most too repetitive, with an eight-note martial refrain and a brute hard rock riff to bounce it off; and then, maybe, with ʻThe Ever So Closely Guarded Lineʼ, the obligatory «grand finale» that closes the curtain with slow tempos, majestic keyboards, and a (feeble) attempt at an epic cres­cendo. Apart from that, the songs just daze and daze and daze me with insane numbers of cos­tume changes from bar to bar, which sometimes make Frank Zappa and Gentle Giant come across as pathetic failures. Then again, it was up to Tim Smith to beat their records, not vice versa, and he seems to have done nicely — coming out with probably the most complex pop record of 1989.
Would it be justified to say that On Land And In The Sea makes absolutely no sense? One pro­bably shouldn't be rushing to give an answer, but I am pretty sure I will never like it more than A Little Man, if only because it has no equivalent of ʻIs This The Life?ʼ — a straightforward, un­derstandable, tumultuous song that stood out very sharply from the rest — and because some­times too much is too much. I cannot even comment on any of the individual songs because it would have to be a lot of comments on each, and then they would all be the same in the end. To say that this record is «crazy» or that it is a «document on insanity» or anything like that would be too cheap and stereotypical, yet I have no idea of how to expand on that. I totally admire the effort, and as far as «achievements» go, the album totally deserves its thumbs up — especially since I can sense the dedication and the energy sweating from every pore. But then again, you can also go out in the mountains and dedicatedly crush rocks with a sledgehammer until your arms fall off, too, and sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling that this is what Cardiacs were doing, too, on land and in the sea.
HEAVEN BORN AND EVER BRIGHT (1992)
1) The Alphabet Business Concern (Home Of Fadeless Splendour); 2) She Is Hiding Beneath The Shed; 3) March; 4) Goodbye Grace; 5) Anything I Can't Eat; 6) Helen And Heaven; 7) Bodysbad; 8) For Good And All; 9) Core; 10) Day Is Gone; 11) Snakes-A-Sleeping.
The Cardiacs suffered a few setbacks in between 1989 and 1992, mostly in the form of gradual loss of band members: saxophonist Sara Smith, percussionist Tim Quy, and keyboardist William Drake had all left in the interim, leaving the band so shaken that Tim Smith did not even bother looking for replacements. Instead, he hired an additional guitarist, Jon Poole, and opted to record the next album in a traditional four-piece format: two guitars, bass, and drums... well, not really. Most of the songs are still chockfull of keyboards and brass, with Sara contributing guest sax and somebody else providing the keyboards (not listed in the credits).
So I would not say that in terms of the overall sound, Heaven Born sounds any sparser or, in fact, all that different from the «classic» releases. Certainly this is not the impression that you get at the outset, when ʻThe Alphabet Business Concernʼ invades your room like a massive choral an­them, with the same level of ironic pomp and playful pretense as always. However, as the songs progress, you do get a gradual feeling of tiredness — could it be that the band is beginning to run out of ideas? Or, rather, not out of specific ideas (there's still more going on inside a single Cardiacs song than on a complete LP by zillions of less inventive bands), but out of The Idea it­self: somehow, if you reach this album in chronological order, this is, for the first time, where they seem to be hitting a brick wall. Objectively, the energy is still there, but they are not really saying anything they didn't say before.
As always, there's a bunch of fast, crazy, mad-organ-and-guitar-led prog-punk anthems with furiously fast, incomprehensible vocals (ʻAnything I Can't Eatʼ, speeding along like a friendly, more psychedelic sibling of Deep Purple's ʻHighway Starʼ); some overdriven power-pop with a hysterical edge (ʻDay Is Goneʼ); some echoes of classic British psychedelic pop with music hall and martial overtones (ʻMarchʼ); and some songs that combine all that in various manners. The main problem with that is that more than ever before, the basic mood behind each song is pretty much the same — a state of somewhat random exuberance, when the protagonist wishes to share his strong emotions with a world that is too busy trying to understand the reason for these emo­tions to partake of them. Tempos and tonalities may shift, but the drive remains the same, as well as the lack of hooks — because the melodies are way too twisted and unstable to ever sink in.
For some reason, Tim Smith has later stated that Heaven Born remains one of his own special favo­rites, because, to him, it had some special mystery to it. This opinion was not shared by the band's fans in general, who tend to see the record as a letdown, and unless we are all missing something, this does ring true: I fail to notice any special distinctive marks here (except for may­be a more pronounced guitar sound, which is hardly an asset in itself — who could ever be se­duced by a «prominent guitar sound» in 1992?), and compared to the previous two albums, the songs basically sound like self-repetition where the band, instead of keeping it natural, has to whip itself into a frenzy to artificially demonstrate that they have not really lost it. Well, tech­nically, they haven't, but you know the drill: «progressive» has the obligation to progress, and if it does not progress, it just rings hollow.
SING TO GOD (1996)
1) Eden On The Air; 2) Eat It Up Worms Hero; 3) Dog-Like Sparky; 4) Fiery Gun Hand; 5) Insect Hoofs On Lassie; 6) Fairy Mary Mag; 7) Bellyeye; 8) A Horse's Tail; 9) Manhoo; 10) Wireless; 11) Dirty Boy; 12) Billion; 13) Odd Even; 14) Bell Stinks; 15) Bell Clinks; 16) Flap Off You Beak; 17) Quiet As A Mouse; 18) Angleworm Angel; 19) Red Fire Coming Out From His Gills; 20) No Gold; 21) Nurses Whispering Verses; 22) Foundling.
If you want a really gushing, salivating, over-the-top-laudatory review of this record, go read this glowing account by Sam Shepherd, who either genuinely believes that Sing To God is one of the greatest records ever made, or must have been so heavily bribed by Alphabet Business Concern that all past and present members of the band should have been left penniless. Granted, the man is not alone in his judgement: the sheer sprawl, scope, loudness, epicness of the record was enough to convert many fans, and there is no denying that a huge mass of creative ideas and painstaking work was involved in its preparation.
I am, however, not impressed — at least, not from a general chronological perspective. First and foremost, if I wanted to make a case for Sing To God as the band's magnum opus in anything other than length terms, I'd need to see what sort of advanced level it represents. Has Tim Smith, on this particular occasion, managed to expand the borders in a clearly perceivable manner? Is he providing any new insights? Are the songs ostensibly improved since last time, or the time before last? I do not get that feeling; as far as I can tell, there may be more of them, yes, but they are still typical Cardiacs songs that share all of the Cardiacs' virtues and vices.
And honestly, with four well-produced, well-pronounced, idea-filled records under their belts, a double album that gives you the same old shit — no matter how complex and technically unpre­dictable that same old shit is (and, actually, at this juncture the Cardiacs' unpredictability is itself becoming almost boringly predictable), it is rather hard to go on being amazed by it. How many times can you shuffle a kaleidoscope (getting different results every time) before the process be­comes monotonous and irritating? The worst thing about Sing To God is: I have listened to it four times, all of its ninety minutes, and I was never once amazed or astounded — yet, clearly, like everything the Cardiacs did, this is an album that is supposed to astound you, and if it does not, and the magic does not work, then it is a failure.
Or maybe not; maybe the worst thing about it is how it presents itself as far more ambitious than anything they did before. From the pretentious title, to the pretentious opening (chimes! soft waves of electronic tinkle! choral harmonies! trying to find the perfect piano chord!), to the 22-track length, they do seem to be telling us, "this is the Cardiacs like you've never heard us before; this is the meaning of life in ninety minutes; this is our SMiLE'>Lifehouse and SMiLE all in one, only we succeed where the ancestors have failed". And to me, it just sounds like one big senseless put-on: an album that's 100% style, 0% substance. The songs come and go, deconstructing and inter­mingling genres like bits of chopped liver, but never bothering to make a proper point.
It's not like there aren't any cool ideas — it's that the album suffers even more than its prede­cessors from excess, not knowing when to stop and explore the full potential of a good idea be­fore surrounding it with half a dozen mediocre ones. It's almost maddening: a tune like ʻDog-Like Sparkyʼ, for instance, which has a couple really cool, Sparks-style lines in the chorus, but they are always over before you can properly enjoy them, and on the whole, the song is just a quick suc­cession of different disconcerting tempos and time signatures that represent complexity for com­plexity's sake, and I will not pretend for a single moment that I enjoy any of it. At least a band like 10cc had some sense of measure.
When the band goes into fast-'n'-furious rocking mode (ʻEat It Up Worms Heroʼ, ʻFiery Gun Handʼ, etc.), they are not doing anything new, either, and they are not generating any true rock'n'roll energy, because it's all tongue-in-cheek, and because it can all stop and become a waltz or a ska piece or an oratorio at any given moment. These songs have literally no purpose other than masturbatory — oh how clever! this is punk, but this is not really punk! we'll let you figure out what it is, or, rather, let you wonder all about it until the end of your days, in stupefied amaze­ment never ending. But what if it is... nothing?
I mean, something like ʻDirty Boyʼ off the top of the second disc sounds like it's poised to be sung on top of Mount Everest, addressed to any of our alien friends if they happen to float by. With big, thunderous bass riffs, screechy lead guitar, wall-of-sound production, and a fin-du-siecle feel that could put Radiohead to shame, it could be the decade's biggest anthem... but there is one thing that it lacks: a killer chord sequence or vocal line that could be endowed/imbued with its own infallible meaning. But its lyrics are undecipherable, its vocals are neither triumphant nor lamenting, its atmosphere neither celebratory nor apocalyptic, neither friendly nor hostile. When it all comes together in the final "over and out!", with vocals artificially enhanced and stretched over at least a minute-long coda, I am almost inclined to fall under the song's mammoth spell, but some little voice in the back of my head keeps telling me that I've been had, and I have a nasty habit of trusting that little voice.
Technically, we could discuss all the complexities and twists of the individual songs until dawn, with occasional detours into the area of mutual influence (ʻManhooʼ sounds like classic Blur circa ʻFor Tomorrowʼ, etc.) or self-admiration (ʻNurses Whispering Versesʼ is an old, old song from the era of shit quality cassette tapes — maybe that is why I find it the most memorable of all the tunes here?), but I do not believe it will do much good, because if there is a «strength» to this record, it is exclusively in its piecemeal nature. Dissect these songs and put them under a micro­scope and there will be no evidence of any significant musical discoveries, since all of these elements can be found scattered across a million pop, prog, and punk records. Tim Smith's sca­venging nature can be admired, yes, but even the seams are too crude, and ultimately, «dementia» and «narcissism» are the only generalizing terms that come to mind.
As of now, I tend to view this whole thing as the turning point where the Cardiacs lost their collective mind — not so much their SMiLE, really, as their Tales From Topographic Oceans, a record that has its sturdy army of fans, too, of course, so if excess and sprawl is your cup of tea, feel free to indulge. Maybe one day when I encounter somebody's positive description of the album that goes beyond trivialities like "oh, there's so much going on here, it must be great!" and actually tries to explain what about it is so great (particularly in comparison to earlier, more restrained Cardiacs albums), I will want to reconsider. Currently, I'm just bored to death, and the album gets a certified thumbs down.
GUNS (1999)
1) Spell With A Shell; 2) There's Good Cud; 3) Wind And Rains Is Cold; 4) Cry Wet Smile Dry; 5) Jitterbug; 6) Sleep All Eyes Open; 7) Come Back Clammy Lammy; 8) Clean That Evil Mud Out Your Soul; 9) Ain't He Messy Though; 10) Signs; 11) Song Of A Dead Pest; 12) Will Bleed Amen.
I wish I could say something like «on the last Cardiacs album, Tim Smith comes to his senses and delivers a meaningful, resonant swansong where all of the band's strengths combine in logical rather than narcisitically irritant ways». But Guns was never ever intended as the band's swan­song, and even though in terms of complexity and accessibility, it is clearly an intentional step back from the brainkill of Sing To God, very little had truly changed on the main segments of the Cardiacs' front over those three last years of the Nineties.
With the same lineup and the same stylistics, Guns is Sing To God's little underdeveloped brother — another energetic, psychotic, overblown celebration of God-knows-what for God-knows-whatever-reasons. Tracks like ʻThere's Good Cudʼ or ʻWill Bleed Amenʼ are excellent representatives of their prog-pop-punk hybrid, with the distorted riffs taken from punk, the ditzy keyboards and vocal harmonies from pop, and the constant tempo and structural changes from prog — meaning that all the good sides of all these genres generally get neutralized by each other, and leave me feeling neither angry nor joyful nor even too perplexed at what I have just heard (and the exact same thing goes for the lyrics, which, by and by, seem to have been written based on a purely aleatory principle — "there's good cud, there's dead good sticker sing mercy alive hot dog love's a-winnin'" is a typical example — could we please alert the Bullshit Police?).
I count one track here that is really interesting and could be recommended to a wide audience: ʻJitterbugʼ, after a few minutes of the usual Cardiacal mess (mutually counteracting indie-rock guitar and New Wave keyboards, each of them existing in its own autonomous world), suddenly transforms into some sort of medieval-inspired «psychedelic Mass», with Tim's spiralling vocals adorned by coherently spiralling kaleidoscopic keyboards and the whole thing acquiring an «alternative angelic» quality. When I compare this with the climactic resolution of ʻDirty Boyʼ on the previous record, I can't help but think that maybe Tim Smith missed his true vocation — re­viving and reinventing the chorale form for a new age. Because once it's over, they get back to their usual tricks — playing rock music that does not have the feel of rock music, brewing a «delicious» stew of musical fish, pickles, and chocolate for those few select palates that can taste it and stomachs that can digest it.
Oddly enough, for the next eight years the band pretty much stopped releasing new material, con­centrating instead on live performances (including focused revivals of their earliest songs from the cassette tape epoch and even before that) — before Tim Smith collapsed from a heart attack and stroke in 2008, from which he is still slowly trying to recover even now; so, for all we know, Guns may have to remain the last Cardiacs album for eternity. But since there is nothing about the album, either objectively or intutitively-subjectively, to suggest a «conclusive» nature, so too will I refrain from any conclusions and end this section on a «to be continued...» note. I mean, regardless of my attitude towards Tim Smith's music, there's no denying the unusual nature of his brain or the adventurousness of his spirit, so here's hoping for an eventual recovery and more of those awfully frustrating Cardiacs albums for us to argue about. In the meantime, I will try to leave this one unrated — at least it does not try the listener's patience for so much time, and I can add ʻJitterbugʼ to the small «best-of» collection that this band deserves, despite all the criticism.

THE CARDIGANS

EMMERDALE (1994)
1) Sick & Tired; 2) Black Letter Day; 3) In The Afternoon; 4) Over The Water; 5) After All...; 6) Cloudy Sky; 7) Our Space; 8) Rise & Shine; 9) Celia Inside; 10) Sabbath Bloody Sabbath; 11) Seems Hard; 12) Last Song.
It is a little hard to believe that a band naming itself after such an essentially British piece of clothing, and naming their first album after such an essentially British piece of soap opera, would be so utterly Swedish — but yes, at the core of The Cardigans are Swedish musicians Magnus Svenigsson and Peter Svensson, who not only play, respectively, the bass and the guitars, but also compose most of the songs, and then, in good ABBA tradition, hand them over to Swedish singer Nina Persson for the vocal treat­ment. Completing the lineup are Lars-Olof Johansson on guitar and piano, and Bengt Lagerberg on percussion — both of them good Swedes, too.
The oddest thing about The Cardigans is that, by all accounts, Svenigsson and Svensson origi­nally came from a heavy metal pedigree — not surprising for Scandinavia, and indirectly still reflec­ted in the band's inclusion of ʽSabbath Bloody Sabbathʼ on their debut album. However, it is unlikely that the average metal fan will be much pleased to hear what they ultimately did to the song (and, in fact, it is quite a hoot to browse through all the irate, blood-thirsty YouTube com­ments on the tune). You know something's not quite right when the instrument selected to intro­duce the melody of one of Iommi's crunchiest songs ever is... a vibraphone — and then, in a mat­ter of seconds, the song takes shape as a «twee-lounge» ditty, with soft jangly guitars, jazzy per­cussion, a guitar solo that's more Donovan than heavy metal, and, most essential of all, vocals that are more Astrud Gilberto than Ozzy. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how one could possibly do a better job remaking ʽSabbath Bloody Sabbathʼ as ʽThe Girl From Ipanemaʼ.
Of course, all that metalhead anger could be easily tempered if people would just stop to remem­ber that behind all the heaviness, Black Sabbath were very much of a pop band — and there is no better reminder of this than the way The Cardigans launch into the "nobody would ever let you know..." bridge section, which was always extremely poppy from the beginning. (To somewhat redeem the Sabsters, Svensson and Svennigsson omit the heaviest part of the tune in the mid-section, possibly be­cause its mountain-crumbling riff was too hard to transpose to vibraphone.) The remake is glorious in its own right, taking our mind off the crude heaviness of the song and reminding us of its melodic, and even psychological, complexity — and in this stylistics, it sounds like Nina is offering a gentle consolation for the poor deluded addressee of the song, rather than lambasting him with heavy scorn, the way Ozzy and Tony do.
Besides, the remake totally fits into the overall style of the entire record; people unfamiliar with Sabbath would never even begin to guess that Emmerdale took a «weird turn» by the time of its tenth track. It's all stylized like that — a musical candy-house, one part baroque, one part pastoral, one part Sesame Street, one part midnight jazz, with Svensson's and Svennigsson's first-rate melo­dies as the base and Nina's «melancholic kitten» delivery as the coating. Yes, that voice can come across as too irritatingly oversexed, but it shouldn't be much of a problem for anyone who likes vocal jazz (or twee pop, for that matter) on the whole, and it fits the music to a tee. Besides, it's not as if we were dealing with «vocal sexploitation» here — if there's any general associations that these songs truly evoke, it would be the colorful sunshine supermanry of Donovan, with a bit of Wizard of Oz thrown in.
Emotionality here runs the gamut from mild depression and disillusionment (ʽSick & Tiredʼ, led by a folk-poppy flute part and tremendously «toe-tappish» despite the overall gray mood) to up­beat optimism — ʽRise & Shineʼ is one of the best twee-pop songs ever written, riding an awe­some wave of internalized joy before it bursts out in a genius chorus (that "rise and shine... rise and shine, my sister" bit sounds awfully familiar, probably because it is so simple, but I can't quite put my finger on any exact possible source). Curiously, ʽRise & Shineʼ was actually an early song, written and released as early as 1992 (its success secured Nina's status with the band, since it was Svensson himself who used to handle lead vocals before that); ʽBlack Letter Dayʼ and ʽSick & Tiredʼ would follow later as additional singles from the album, but on Emmerdale, the sequencing is reversed, and the record begins with «darker» songs before moving on to the more positive ones, gradually brightening your day.
Come to think of it, there is not a single bad song on the album; every track has something to offer in the way of a great vocal hook, a moody twist, or an attractive instrumental riff. The style and instrumentation may be cohesive and perhaps even monotonous at times, but this is well com­pensated for by the inventiveness of the writers and arrangers. The gently waltzing ʽBlack Letter Dayʼ, other than the vocal seductiveness (could the lines "I drank all that I could, more than I should" ever sound more sweet and innocent?), has a brilliant jazzy bassline whose melo­dicity may well remind you of McCartney's use of the bass as a magic pop wand on Sgt. Pepper. ʽIn The Afternoonʼ is a really great song about winter boredom that manages to poeticize said boredom like nothing else (this is, like, Cinderella's song on a chore-free day).
Even the few songs where they completely dispense with the rhythmic base are excellent: ʽAfter All...ʼ is straightforward lounge jazz, with jazz piano chords, a jazz guitar solo, and a dreamy, lullaby-like vocal melody, and it's as lovely as any vocal jazz can be (not to mention the weird ambiguity of the words, which can jump from love-struck giddiness to love-scared fright and confusion within the same verse). ʽLast Songʼ concludes the record in stern, somber chamber-pop mode, with a string quartet backing Nina as she sings about the death of a friend — a little too stiff, perhaps, but without any traces of corniness. It is actually a perfect final flourish for a re­cord that, at first, may sound fluffy, but in the end, demands to be taken seriously; and it wouldn't be, for that matter, until Arcade Fire's Funeral that we'd have another finale like this (not that it's anything but sheer coincidence, but I thought that a mention of Funeral in a Cardigans review could help drive their stock prices a bit, along with that of Paul McCartney).
Anyway, the style of the album may be doing it a disservice among the hip crowds who like their stuff harsher, harder, and less retro-oriented, but the music is uniformly excellent, and although the band went on making albums that acquired far more popularity (Emmerdale was, in fact, not even released internationally until several years lately), to my mind, they never made a more con­sistent or complete package than this one. Thumbs up without question. Also note that newer releases throw on an extra four tracks that, although excellent in their own rights, were actually taken from the original release of Life, their second LP, because its original international release replaced them with five tracks from Emmerdale (yes, confusing story worthy of the discographi­c horrors with UK bands in the mid-Sixties, but there you go — in 1994, conceptuality and integ­rity in some parts of the world continued to be spat on just as they were in 1964. Music business as usual again).