Cardigan's Latest Album is Swede and Low

CARDIGANS

Gran Turismo

Mercury Records

What makes a pop song glisten with perfection? For George Gershwin, it is the simple joy of melody, wittily phrased; think of "S'Wonderful," a song whose lyrics would be silly if its music were not really so wonderful. For the Beatles, it might be mundane working-class life appreciated for all of its unique, fantastical truth--take "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," which reshapes ordinary objects into a stunning psychedelic spectacle.

For the Swedish band, the Cardigans, it resides in the encounter of contrary instincts--the sweet, seductive purr of joyful music and the dark, cruel snarl of painful obsessions. Remember "Lovefool," the song from a couple of years ago that burst off the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack and was suddenly, like the fixated ex-lover it depicted, lurking stubbornly everywhere you looked? Few songs have snuck a more subversive view of love into the frivolous dance arena of top 40 radio. You'd scarcely realize from the jubilant disco drums and the syncopated keyboard touches that the song was actually about wretched abjection, the ways we degrade ourselves for love. Lead singer Nina Persson might have sounded impossibly glamorous, but she was still "cry[ing], pray[ing] and beg[ging]" as a pathetic, deflated masochist. Far from the weightless retro nugget it resembled, "Lovefool" used its radiant hooks to the most perverse of aims, like a tootsie roll pop with an acid core. Not bad for a band too often pigeonholed as mild candy for the "Easy Listening" dustbin.

Let it be known: nothing on the Cardigans' new album Gran Turismo has the unique saccharine thrill of the peerless "Lovefool." But you can't underestimate the album's unusual charms, both familiar and fresh. More than any of their previous work, the album reveals the clash of personalities that enlivens the ensemble: the heavy metal/hard rock lineage of guitarists Peter Svensson and Magnus Sveningsson and the '60s girl-group pop song tradition of singer Nina Persson and producer Tore Johansson. Certainly, the group is far from a mere novelty project of classic pop archivist Johansson; as their First Band on the Moon cover photograph displays ardently, the Cardigans can rock.

Though their early albums Emmerdale and Life musically indulged the lighter guises of the band, distorted guitars and power chords have been seeping into the Cardigans' sound with increasing insistence and intensity. On Gran Turismo, for the first time, the Cardigans finally capture the state of cutting-edge rock circa 1998 rather than the state of vintage pop circa 1968.

In great part, the reinvention of the Cardigans has been enabled by their bold passage into the world of trip-hop electronica. Rather than the familiar panoply of flutes, horns and strings of their previous work, Gran Turismo grooves to the unfamiliar rhythmic contortions and techno loops of an electronic beat box. Impressively, the Cardigans integrate these new elements seamlessly, brewing a series of the catchiest pop songs this side of Alanis Morissette; every track sounds as if it were designed to rule the airwaves. Unlike the beat-driven atmospherics of classic trip-hop bands like Portishead, the Cardigans fix their songs resolutely in potent hooks and lucid melodies. Even when the lyrics don't cut too deeply, you can't help humming along.

The album opens auspiciously with the dark, mechanical "Paralyzed," immediately revealing how far Persson' voice has come from the cute whispers of her early word. Though the subject matter--a morbid depiction of love as "the sweetest way to die"--recalls the debased impulses of "Lovefool," there is no meek ingenue here. Persson's vocals now bristle with a surprising fury while a guitar whines and cracks in the background like the resurrected ghost of desire. When the striking hook emerges in the expansive chorus, it has epic weight of truth; love is, as the Cardigans insist, the surrender of sanity and the beginning of hard, ambiguous emotions. Again and again the songs return to these dark themes of alienation and pain. Love "kills you, it keeps you alive," Persson purrs menacingly in the slick, jerky "Explode," and she means it.

Musically, one might criticize the Cardigans for their lack of originality. Admittedly, it does seem somewhat faddish and even artificial for them to embrace the trendy electronica sound after every other band and their mothers have already dressed up as techno gear-heads. Dusky distortions on tracks like "Marvel Hill" sound a lot like vintage Portishead and the guitar-driven "Starter" disturbingly suggests an even catchier Aimee Mann impersonation.

For mimics, though, the Cardigans do use the razor-sharp melodies and propulsive perpulsive percussion awfully effectively. None of the stylish songs on Gran Turismo may have the impact of something truly new, but they do have the impeccable production of Tore Johansson elevating the sounds into a stratosphere of classic pop song delight. Maybe Gran Turismo is just tasty candy, but you won't be getting these sweet, sinister confections out of your teeth any time soon.