Pop Renaissance, page 2
The album's sound -- light, shimmering, romantic, lush, peppy, and just a bit sad - - is a mixture of "beat music," MOR pop, bossa nova, with a hint of "space age" background music. The songs are, of course, about romance, but at times the real subject seems to be the perfect balance of grounding and buoyancy achieved by Bengt Lagerberg's drumming and Nina Persson's airy voice, which tops the songs like egg whites whipped to soft peaks.
"Tomorrow is a sugar kiss," she sings at one point, and so's the whole album, but never a saccharine one. Peter Svensson and Lasse Johansson's guitars give the numbers a gently swinging momentum, and there isn't a moment when the arrangements cross the line from wit into self-congratulatory irony. There are horns, flutes, organs, but all of it, even the strings that cascade through "Carnival," are presented straight. The Cardigans aren't using this outmoded style for a goof, in the manner of Pizzicato Five or Combustible Edison. They present themselves as a band to listen to, not a joke to get.
Retro is in right now, and all sorts of past pop styles are being
resurrected with po-mo quotation marks to allow audiences to feel hip while assuring themselves that nothing is at stake, that emotion is expendable. It's too much to expect a lighter-than-air pop record to cut against the grain of that trend, especially since the Cardigans may be embraced by the same crowd that thinks, How cool -- everything old is new again. But this parfait of an album is a reminder that even the most frivolous entertainments should entail a basic level of emotional commitment.
