The Cardigans


	Back. PRESS REVIEWS AFTONBLADET (SWE) - 3/5 With Super Extra Gravity yet another advantage of downloading music is revealed. You don't get the ugly covers. The sixth Cardigans record has a provokingly stylized sleeve, designed by Martin Renck (Stakka Bo's younger brother). But then again the quintet is the most sensitive trend-barometer the country has ever had. When the indie-style was in; The Cardigans made indie. When the rocker style was everywhere; The Cardigans made the rocky Gran Turismo. When alt-country was hot... well, you know the rest. Now the Cardigans are a chic adult-rock band - very in style right now. I wouldn't call it "genuine", but these international stars from Jönköping have always made good music during these schizophrenic years. This time 'round they say they sound a little bit "dirtier" Don't buy it. The big surprise is Little Black Cloud, which is reminiscent of Kent's Kräm. And Then You Kissed Me II is where The Cardigans next album should take off from. Acoustic, spontaneously fleeting and unusually emotional. Finally, The Cardigans are onto something completely original. - JONNA SIMA Review of I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer. "Sit. Good dog. Stay. Bad dog. Wo-hoo. Down. Roll over." In The Cardigans' new relationship drama Nina Persson spits commandos as if she were clad in leather and bolts. It's all about radio-friendly sadomasochism with canine lyrics - "I'm a pitbull, you're a dog" - cowbell, rock rattle, immediate melodies and a couple of distinctive riffs from Peter Svensson. Everything is as it usually is, but the music still has a sharper edge and a rustier finish than before. And it sounds brilliant! The strange thing about The Cardigans is that they seem to sell less record the better they become. The last album Long Gone Before Daylight was without a doubt their best one at the time but the sales figures didn't meet the expectations. At least not internationally. I Need Some Fine Wine might sadly reinforce that development. This single should really be a flop - it really is that good! - MARKUS LARSSON BBC (UK) link Super Extra Gravity follows the lead of 2004's earnest Gone Before Daylight, but with slightly harder, more jagged edges. But whilst lyrically Gone... is set in a bubble of an intense relationship going right and wrong, SEG takes inspiration from farther afield. Religion is one theme; in "Godspell". While "Don't Blame Your Daughter" reads like a letter giving her ex-husband and children's father a damned good ticking off. Nina goes on to explore the ill-effects of too much alcohol on a raging jealous tongue with the best song title ever, "I Need Some Fine Wine, And You, You Need To Be Nicer". But dysfunctional relationships are a common theme, with old song "And Then You Kissed Me" gaining a sequel here. There are no great departures instrumentally and The Cardigans continue their evolution into a serious, spacious indie group with polished songs. It seems that the ironic, chatty Cardigans of Emmerdale are gone forever, but they're still sounding damn fine. - LUCY DAVIES DAGENS NYHETER (SWE) They say that no musical audience is as faithful as the Japanese. If you have once conquered it, you've got it forever. This goes for artists from all epoques and of all styles, from The Ventures to Momus. However, The Cardigans have lost theirs. Because the relationship is built on an agreement, an unspoken promise to always remain the same. The Cardigans have done the forbidden, they have changed so much and so often that almost nobody today can tell what a typical Cardigans song is like. Not to mention what their next album will be like. Super Extra Gravity is no exception. Once again it seems as though they have invented a new sonic world for themselves. Even though there are some melodies that could have fit very well into Long Gone Before Daylight, the touch and the production are more like the very opposite. Where The Cardigans sounded warm, mature and Country-tinged two years ago, they now make a rock record filled with spikes. Not hard, but sharp. The thing that still makes you recognize that it is The Cardigans has a lot to do with Nina Persson's voice, forever on top of the mix and more expressive for each passing year. But she was also something else entirely on the early albums. Her light girly voice has grown into that of a mature woman's, with plenty of space for coarse, soft and not always "lovely" tones. It goes just as well with today's screwy rock as it did with yesterday's melancholic ballads, on the other hand, it's a tone that is far away from the breakthrough tracks Carnival (Japan) and Lovefool (the rest of the world). The decisive breaking point is actually somewhere in there, when they switched focus from pop to rock, when the attention was moved from singles to albums. A big top-40 audience just didn't follow. There have certainly been a lot of artists that have changed their style now and again, a long career would be insufferable if they didn't. But almost all keep within their cultural sphere, choose expressions where the audiences are similar. To go from colorful MTV-pop to sepia-toned adult rock is something else. It's more like when Neil Young scared the hell out of his fans with a synth-record, in a time where electronics were still the enemy of rock. You don't only have two different audiences, but they also regard each other with incredulity. It's not a very bold guess to assume that a lot of the people that could have been the demographic for The Cardigans last album just didn't listen, because the name of the band was already established as shallow chart-pop. If you want to see it as a tactical choice, The Cardigan's newest direction could be regarded as a step back towards chart music. Many of the songs carry influences from American radio-rock, not least the second track Godspell, and the first single I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer, belongs to some of the catchiest tunes they have ever recorded, in spite of its title. Still, I doubt that this album will be a chart comet. If anything it sounds like it was made to be appreciated in hindsight, when The Cardigans have had the time to take yet a few surprising career moves and started to get the serious respect they deserve - that of a band that do live up to the cliché about "always challenging themselves." In waiting for that moment I've started to wonder what the next Cardigans album may sound like. - NILS HANSSON - Read in Swedish. DRUMMER'S DIGEST (SWE) - 4/5 And so it's finally here; The most longed-for Swedish release of the year. Long Gone Before Daylight was one of the best albums of 2003, and has in periods been in my CD player for weeks. So it was with a slight dose of uneasiness I received Super Extra Gravity. And it's really different in comparison. Not when it comes to the songs themselves, because you can instantly tell what band you're listening to, and the songs are as good as ever. But if Long Gone was sweet and sensitive, the new record is raw and naked both sound-wise and playing-wise. Occasionally it sounds like a rehearsing basement where the band still is trying out the new songs to find their ultimate shape. And if the drummer Bengt Lagerberg used to have a "less is more" kind of playing, he's really hitting on everything that he can find on his drumkit. At first I wasn't very fond of Super Extra Gravity, but now I've been listening to it for some time, and it's growing bigger each time I play it. Suddenly you become aware of the elegance and the well thought out ideas behind the hard and edgy surface. The entire band shows that they still consider the music to be in charge, more than a fixed idea of how it's supposed to sound. Nina Persson still has a voice that I fall instantly in love with, and the song harmonies and arrangements are enchanting me with their complicated simplicity. It's also a record with lots of shifting dynamics, not least when it comes to the drumming. On the first track, Losing A Friend you're first deceived to hear direct parallels with Long Gone, but it turns out to be a hard-line thing with very loud mixed drums bashing their way through the song, while on the beautiful Don't Blame Your Daughter (Diamonds) they're played with just the tastefulness and feeling I like about Bengt's performance on Long Gone. And the closing track And Then You Kissed Me II doesn't sound like anything else on this record. With pounding Keith Moon toms (sounding like empty cans and boxes) and cymbals all over the place, it's emphasizing the desperate and frustrated feeling of the song, lifting it to a perfect final climax of the record. Super Extra Gravity isn't the typical Cardigans album (which makes it just that) but when you've listened to it for some time, I don't think you can be disappointed with it, no matter how much you'll try. - JACOB HERRMANN link HMV UK Scorn, revenge, agnosticism and kinky sex; all this deviance may come as a surprise to the multitudes who bought into the fluffy easy-listening effervescence of The Cardigans' earlier material. Super Extra Gravity will, however, be less of a culture shock to long-term subscribers; The Cardigans - fans of black Sabbath, apparently, while other historical clues have pointed towards a fondness for The Stranglers - always had their darker side, the band's sound taking a turn down a more shadowy alleyway as long ago as the Gran Turismo album. On Super Extra Gravity Sweden's finest set out to make something "twisted and spectacular". They achieve this - the bible-trashing "Godspell" sounds like Sheryl Crow riding the fairground ghost train while "Losing A Friend" takes the tenderness of the third Velvet Underground album and adds clumping drums and a torturous electric-shock guitar solo worthy of Jonny Greenwood - without losing sight of a winning pop melody. And what of the extraordinary "I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer"? Has it anything to do with dog-training, booze and master / servant sexuality ? Eye-brow raising curiosities abound but Super Extra Gravity is a winning combination of the strange and beautiful. [Kevin Maidment, Amazon.co.uk] Every listen of the new record reveals another gem; The Cardigans have succeeded in their aim to make a beautifully deranged album that never ceases to surprise the listener. INTRO (DE) Super Extra Gravity sneaks up an you slowly. Along a fitting guitar picking Nina Persson sings the matching line: "You're losing a friend." A casual opening which makes you presume it's a sequel to the magnificent predecessor, Long Gone Before Daylight. About two and a half years ago The Cardigans immortalised their particular brand of pop with Long Gone Before Daylight - their above-average songwriting, their unmistakable sense of drama, their unresistable understated way of rock - packed into a record that made a unified whole, embraced by Persson's inimitable voice. And now after the first ten seconds in a fog of crescendo it becomes obvious that Sweden is upside down. With a drum beat just as crackbrained and banal as enchanting, The Cardigans redefine their context and set up the standard for the following 40 minutes. The band worked with Tore Johansson again, who produced the first four records and quit while working on Long Gone. According to the band Johansson said things like: "Oh, you wrote a song. It's pretty boring. Let's try something." Then he muddles things - arrangements, songs. That's not a bad approach, as all Cardigans songs actually sound the same. Not identical, of course, but they just have this mood of their own. Development is a question of production, the emphasising of details and arrangements, and of the attitude with which you make the music, with which you approach a song. In this case: Rebellion. Rebellion against the perfection of the last record. "When you've achieved something, you have to go further", thinks Persson. "We are not the tightest band in the world, far from it. But we have never been better than we are today. And now we try to get back a bit of naivete." A maximum amount of child-like happiness is mediated already through the single I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to be Nicer. A strange guitar intro in a call-and-response style, arguing with a cowbell. Which you haven't heard like this since Guns 'n' Roses' Appetite for Destruction. "Naive, simple guitar riffs are almost something experimental for us" is how Peter explains the revolution. "We've even improvised a bit in the studio, just to see what would happen." They feel "like teenagers" being in their early and mid thirties. Just as if they hadn't been in the business for ten years now, as if three fifths of them hadn't become dads in the past months. This new discovered feeling of being teenagers is also revealed in statements like this one: "Something that probably doesn't mean anything to anyone in this word, not even me, but is funny," laughs Nina Persson just to prove it, "is that the first and the last line of the record rhyme. 'you're losing a friend' and 'happy end'." LES INROCKUPTIBLES (FR) To many, The Cardigans will always be that little group from Sweden with the blonde singer and Lovefool. Nevertheless, a lot has changed between the soundtrack to Romeo + Juliet and 2005. For starters, singer Nina Persson doesn't have blonde hair anymore but sports a natural brown. To continue, and above all, the band's music has well and truly been transformed. First with Gran Turismo, an album with songs that still were poppy and catchy but more tortured. Then with Nina's solo album, A Camp, where she discovered that she could lend her voice to folk ballads. Then followed Long Gone Before Daylight, a more adult album, more mature, with sombre melodies and a rawer rock sound. Super Extra Gravity takes up where The Cardigans last left off: the grave ballads - the poignant Losing a Friend, Don't Blame Your Daughter (Diamonds) - the piercing pop-rock pieces - In the Round, Little Black Cloud - the heavier tracks - Godspell or the first single with the mischievous title so typical of Nina Persson's brilliant lyrics: I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer. Less feigned, rockier, warmer, Nina Persson's voice from now on lives within the songs, pushes them to the edge, carrying Super Extra Gravity very far, to where the laws of gravity don't apply anymore. - ANNE-CLAIRE NOROT. - Read in French. MUSIKEXPRESS (DE) - 5/5 The ones who can read between the lines, or in people's eyes or faces, may have always known that the happy-sweet cuteness of the early Cardigans was just on the surface. Deep inside of Nina Persson the dark side is taking over, like it does inside all normal mad people like you and me who love the feeling of alcohol getting into your head preparing it for discussions on the philosophy of existence. Love, the favourite game Persson sang about once, she lost - at least in the song. And with Long Gone Before Daylight, the Cardigans' album from 2003, it became obvious at the latest, that Persson isn't the smirking easy-listening chick from the Life cover, but a healthy melancholy person instead, whose favourite topics are difficulties and failed relationships. Up until now, Long Gone Before Daylight was the Cardigans' best and most grown-up (some people want to be reminded of Sheryl Crow here) record - if you consider it to be good and grown-up to be sitting alone in your room at 3:45 in the morning with a bottle of red wine and the thought that the sun may never rise again. Super Extra Gravity is about unhappy love and lost friendship and red wine at four in the morning again, but the basic mood is not as dark as on the predecessor. The opener Losing a Friend could well be the forgotten twelfth song of Long Gone Before Daylight. "You're losing a friend. You got it all wrong. It's not about revenge. I didn't see it coming with my head stuck in the sand. And now I'm losing a friend", is what Persson is singing, that she would rather like to die and go to hell and back. That's not really the smirking easy-listening chick from the Life cover. The slow Losing a Friend with its snare nicely mixed into the front is the bridge between the wistfulness of Long Gone Before Daylight and the midtempo Indie rock of Super Extra Gravity. Between all these hits (the hymn-like Godspell, the sauciness-that-became-a-single I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer) and those more-than-hits (the shining-like-the-sun Good Morning Joan) you can't even find anything negative about Overload, which is like a waltz to move to and fro to, but still close to being schmaltz. As a songwriter, Peter Svensson is only getting better and better - a song like Don't Blame Your Daughter (Diamonds) is just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. The production is what you would call "earthy", "rough" and "dirty" - never before have The Cardigans sounded more "indie" than on this record. But the most important thing about this band is a quality rarely found in other veterans of the 90s: The Cardigans have been reinventing themselves slowly. The only thing that still reminds you about "back then" is their name. Which is still the name of a piece of clothing that was the highest degree of "retro chic" back in the 90s. MUSIKLANDET (SWE) To play in The Cardigans can never get boring. The guitarist and main songwriter Peter Svensson constantly goes down new paths in the muddled world of music and to tag along on his journey is probably a great inspiration as well as a challenge for the band members. This time Svensson has left the big arrangements behind, flushed the immediate hit-leanings and instead focused on a somewhat sparse and primitive sound. The Cardigans may not sound like a garage band on Super Extra Gravity but the tendencies are these. Small simple details that sometimes remind you of The White Stripes on a calm afternoon. The songs are there. Peter Svensson is an excellent composer no matter what direction the songs take. This time however, The Cardigans are a bit more restrained and personally I like the band better when they let the rock-poses flow in the wind (You're the Storm) and when the choruses can more mountain ranges (Erase / Rewind). But those of you that enjoy this edition of The Cardigans can look forward to a very gratifying moment. - JONATHAN STRANDLUND - Read in Swedish. NME (UK) Review of I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer. Like most of The Cardigans' impeccable back catalogue, this is a song best listened to while driving alone through mountainous regions of Northern Europe with the wind in your hair and a nagging sense of regret on your conscience. It's no Lovefool(what is?) but it is a typically sussed, classy piece of pop music, featuring Nina Persson chastising you as a "bad dog" before amourously commanding you to "sit" as it ends. You may (or indeed may not) be surprised to find that it makes you go more than a little bit moist. NÖJESGUIDEN (SWE) The Cardigans and I age together. As if Nina and the band were my high-school buddies that leapt out into the world, but we've still always kept in touch and our musical preferences have always gone hand-in-hand. Just as perfect as the bubbly and clattering Life was ten years ago, was the country-tinged and significantly more mature Long Gone Before Daylight in 2003. The new album Super Extra Gravity picks up the Long Gone-ball only to end up in a completely different ballpark. Instead of caressing the instruments as before the band is slamming them, and if the last album was sad this one is more pissed-off. Still very grown up, still unpolished but more playful and straggling. There is no theme that runs throughout all the songs and the way they sound, they all live their own lives and fight their own demons. On the single with the best title of the year, I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer they bring on the cowbells and dominatrix-phrases. The best song is In the Round which sticks like velcro with its handclaps and a stalking guitar-line that in spite of the calm tempo chases me as if I had Nicholson after me in that winter-labyrinth. And then the two ballad-classics-to-be, the balroom-beauty Overload and Losing a Friend, an utterly wonderful song with an utterly wonderful spiky guitar ending and on top of it Nina's wonderful voice whimpering in despair "oh no, you're losing a friend, I'm losing you". I die. I take back what I said before, this is the best one. But then you change the track and stumble into the next one, and the next one. Every song is a universe in itself and fights for the number one position. I still think that the lovely and youthful Life is their best album, but The Cardigans aren't kids anymore. And neither am I. I couldn't have wished for a better album from my new old friends in 2005. - EMELIE THORÉN PITCHFORK MEDIA (US) - 7.5/10 link The Cardigans could have been real good to you. Fine, so they never reconfirmed ABBA national stereotypes with more defiantly bubblegum brilliance like 1995's Life or 1996's First Band from the Moon. They just needed their space. Maybe they got it on 1998's electronica-tinged Gran Turismo, but they're not the ones who didn't call after the dulcet pop-rock slickness of 2004's melancholic Long Before Daylight. "True love is cruel love," formerly blond frontwoman Nina Persson sang on that album's brutal "And Then You Kissed Me". Turning toward jagged country-rock, sixth album Super Extra Gravity strips the bandages from a 10-year abusive relationship that hasn't been this poker-hot since the early days. It's a reason to keep coming back. Believe it or not, cruelty was always an undercurrent for the Swedish quintet, formed in 1992 over a love of heavy metal and a hardcore past. Self-destruction is the order on first single "I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer", as a sultry Persson describes lovers' quarrels that lead straight to "a glass or 10." Yo La Tengo guitar squalls intermittently rend smoldering breakup song "Losing a Friend". A seductive sadomasochism further informs stomping "Drip Drop Teardop" and dark finale "And Then You Kissed Me II", which extends its predecessor toward an ironical "happy end". On soaring country-waltz "Overload", with Spector-reverbed honky-tonk pianos, the pain gives way to even fierier pleasures: "I'm hot, baby/ Don't burn your fingers." Religion soon intrudes on the sex, as is its wont. "Godspell" recalls Emmylou Harris in condemning all manner of crooks who brandish the Lord as a crutch, but mostly it seethes with hot-blooded guitar and gently accusatory piano. Its whistling mid-song march is just one of many surprises in the album's carefully constructed compositions-- see also the new-wave synth following the straight-ahead "Dreams"-era Fleetwood Mac verses of "In the Round". Steeped in organs, "Holy Love" lifts toward an angelic bridge on the strength of bursting bass and what sounds like harpsichord, but ultimately finds love as conflict-filled as ever. "I can even be nothing if you ask/ I'll turn invisible for you," Persson pleads huskily. Despite some gratingly obvious rhymes, "Good Morning Joan" is a catchy, faster number even as it rejects any semblance of salvation. Super Extra Gravity is too deft to be too dark, though-- there's joy in its catharsis. "Sit...good dog!" begins "Fine Wine", as guitar, bass and drums bark in conversation. "Little Black Cloud" just wants to dance, and second single "Don't Blame Your Daughter (Diamonds)" is a ballad as VH1-ready as anything on Cat Power's recent soccer-mom stab The Greatest, only prettier. These days it seems like every new band is Swedish. But my original Scandinavian love, armed with a newly raw aesthetic, has finally approached the beauty of that long-ago MTV first sight. Hit me baby, one more time. - MARC HOGAN Q MAGAZINE - 3/5 (UK) Over the course of 13 years, The Cardigans have become increasingly downbeat. The joyful fizz of their 1996 single Lovefool seems very far away now, and they've become more maudlin with each release. While not quite as beautifully forlorn as 2003's Long Gone Before Daylight, this latest offering still drapes Velvet Underground melodies around the stooped shoulders of singer Nina Persson, a doleful siren who does sadness with breathtaking conviction. - NICK DUERDEN STYLUS MAGAZINE (US) Review of I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer. - 10/10, 6/10 The prettiest band in the whole world, and their Country and Northern is awfully easy on the ears as well. Nina Persson's twang is as fantastic as ever, her phrasing is marvellous, and basically she drips pure sex when she commands her dog of a beau to bend to her command. Also she appears to be a drunken harlot from the lyrics. A woman after my own heart. - EDWARD OCULICZ Not nearly as bad-ass as it think it is with its cowbell and Ògood dogÓ intro, but still pretty poptastic in places. I Need Some Fine Wine, And You, You Need To Be Nicer is a great lyric/title, and the chorus is catchy, but the whole thing fails to gel. The Cardigans clearly still know how to write that sort of infectious pop that ensures Lovefool is fondly remembered, but it just didn't quite happen this time. - JONATHAN BRADLEY. Read more (scroll down the page). Review of Don't Blame Your Daughter (Diamonds). - 8/10 In the same way doomed stars orbit black holes, The Cardigans keep circling around the perfect pop song, coming ever closer to fulfilling their hit-making potential. "Don't Blame Your Daughter," is the best they've done since the "Lovefool" follow-up "My Favourite Game," and although it's not quite arresting enough to suggest The Cardigans have reached the zenith they keep aiming for, it comes tantalisingly close. Spinning out the pop with a slight country edge, it's lovely, but lacking the spark to really ignite something magical. One day though, the Cardigans will comfortably occupy the top end of yearly singles lists, and by the sound of this track, that day is not too far away. - JONATHAN BRADLEY. Read more (scroll down the page). THE TIMES - 4/5 (UK) The Cardigans were never an eager-to-please pop group, yet the country-tainted Long Gone Before Daylight (recorded in 2003 without the producer Tore Johansson) was a defiant departure. For their sixth album (have the Swedes been around that long?) Johansson returns, and he meshes the urbane beauty of Long Gone with his usual acute arranging skills and a trademark sound that is both glossy and hard. The clearest sign of the new détente is the current single, I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer — C&W songtitle with racy guitar chassis meets Nina Persson’s nagging vocal hooks. Good Morning Joan also echoes the chamber-pop swing of old, but the quivering Stockholm Americana ballads still rule. - MARTIN ASTON UNCLE SALLY'S (DE) Is there anyone who wasn't in love with Nina Persson when she made a blonde and sweet-as-sugar Lovefool out of herself!? But The Cardigans did not stick to their recipe for success and easy listening sounds of that time. Instead they took us on an electro excursion with Gran Turismo and provided the perfect soundtrack for dreamy hours with Long Gone Before Daylight. What is left is Nina's softly breathing voice unmistakably whispering through the scantily fit ballads and singing country-like and hard-rocking on the up tempo tracks that make up Super Extra Gravity. For some, it may not be the best, but it certainly is the most versatile album The Cardigans have ever made. Thank-you -berlin-* for the translations from German.* Back.