THE CARDIGANS: 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.
I couldn't find the original version of this album without the songs from Emmerdale. However, the copy I do have seems to have a different version of Rise & Shine than the one on Emmerdale. It's more polished and in my opinion superior.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard of this band for some reason, but they're really brilliant. Their music seems very effortless, simple pop music that is occasionally brilliant. And that's about the highest compliment I can give.
I was investigating some post New Wave music and I was torturing myself trying to appreciate My Bloody Valentine only to have to grudgingly accept that some of their songs are quite good even if I can't claim to understand most of their catalog. And that's tiresome, so finding a band like the Cardigans whose music is friendly and accessible was very nice. And for my money they deserve easily as much credit as MBV, even if the level of originality is incomparable.