This may just be me, but Europe started looking really good somewhere around the second week of November. Sure the unemployment rates are in the mid-teens and it probably sucks more to be a religious or ethnic minority in Europe than it does here. But the lifestyle seems pretty sweet. I think about what life would be like there, sometimes. Those 35-hour workweeks would have taken a toll, so I’d be glad to have that generously state-mandated month-long paid vacation. On day 21 of my vacation I’d hop in my small, fuel-efficient car and jet to the museum to enjoy some state-subsidized art. And what is this candy-coated pop music – English-language, no less – bumping through the speakers? Why, it’s high-buff shine of the new Cardigans record, Long Gone Before Daylight.
It has been six years since the last Cardigans’ album, and seven years since their loopy, sharp-edged “Lovefool” was a major pop radio hit. These Swedes may never have another big American hit – the two singles on this record, “You’re The Storm” and “For What It’s Worth,” have a commercially damning whiff of Ikea’d-out Swedishness about them – but the Cardigans are still making likable, reliably idiosyncratic pop music, with a hearty side-helping of studio smooveness. It’s nothing so remarkable, really, but as the pop music on the radio reaches almost ludicrously cheesy heights/depths – Did you know Jessica Simpson covered “Take My Breath Away” last year? Did you know that Good Charlotte has not yet been forcibly disbanded? – The Cardigans’ fine Swedish craftsmanship seems more impressive than ever. These are just highly produced pop songs, albeit with the mordant and slightly strange lyrics that give the band its weird charm, but decent radio pop songs have been hard to find of late. (As a disclaimer: I know there’s a lot of good pop being done by indie bands; I review it fairly often, and I enjoy it immensely. I’m talking about the music people know about: radio music)
Nina Persson’s voice and slightly sprung songwriting instincts are The Cardigans’ strongest assets, and they’re at the fore here. Long Gone Before Daylight’s musical arrangements are much more conventional than on earlier Cardigans’ efforts – a solid but unspectacular guitar-led approach predominates the 14 tracks – and the production values are almost ostentatiously high; even Avril Lavigne’s vocals aren’t this high in the mix. That said, it’s hard to argue with Persson being all up in your ear: she’s got a strong, expressive voice and one of the most likably off-kilter songwriting approaches in pop music. Some of these songs are plain earnest – most notably “Communication,” which is a very pretty but exceedingly straightforward discussion of the challenges of… yeah, that – but Persson’s metaphors and turns of phrase are still reliably odd. “You’re The Storm” is the first love song I’ve heard employ a colonial conquest motif in… uh, ever. Even bolder is “And Then You Kissed Me,” which ends with Persson alternately singing “and then you kissed me/and then you hit me.” The emotional violence/physical violence trope is daring, slightly off-putting but, to my mind, successful: the lyrics engage, and the song slinks prettily through its six-minute course. The whispery, elegiac “03.45: No Sleep” (how amazingly Euro is that time signification?) is another lovely standout, and showcases Persson’s voice over a delicate, likably restrained arrangement. And the U.S.-only bonus track “For The Boys” is a sharp little rocker – and probably the only chance we’ll ever get to hear Nina Persson sound like Lucinda Williams – that really should be on the radio.
I’m not going to pretend this record is anything it isn’t: these songs aren’t breaking any new ground, and for all Persson’s charming mordancy, the arrangements are conventional enough to render much of the record unremarkable. Still, even if much of Long Gone Before Daylight scans a little Ikea Catalog, there’s a real pleasure in it. We shouldn’t have to be importing pop music like this: we invented this shit, remember? The US/Europe pop music trade deficit won’t be the one you hear the most about over the next few years, but even on this mild but likable effort, The Cardigans highlight just how gaping it is. |