THE CARDIGANS: 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past us and we are now free again to just enjoy the music without the outdated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.
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