Those little Cardies who made Life seem so sugary sweet and got lost
in the awe-inspiring solipsism of game-playing navel-gazing on their
underappreciated classic Gran Turismo are all grown up,
baby-o, and the winds o' time have blown their sweet Swedes' hearts
fair into the grounds of grown-up emotion, with relationship-dom now
the bosom nurturing an increased self-awareness and sense of decency
and, like, a desire to play music filled with twang. The Cardigans
own claim is that Long Gone Before Daylight shows that they're
"not too old to rock 'n' roll," but, well, actually, on this
evidence, they are. Aside from one track, "A Good Horse," in which
they ride an, uh, like, rockin' riff and rock-celebrity backing-vox
(Hives/Hellacopters dudes) into some butch territories, this disc is
basically a really nice, accomplished, adult(!) record filled to the
brim with intelligent variations on the love song, recorded with the
kind of choice tone that bands who're all grown up can nail
(especially if they head to Eggstone's Tambourine studios, which
should be a studio mecca for pop-bands to rival Albini's Audio
Engineering for, uh, bands-filled-with-audio-engineers). Center to
all this baby-ain't-no-baby-no-more maturity is Nina Persson, of
course. Her A Camp solo disc set the stage for this,
introducing a whole bunch of elements — the preponderance of
twang, the bashful balladry, the occasional ugly rock moment —
that her main band has since decided to run with. But, really, it's
Persson's perceptive, probing, strangely powerful pop-song lyrics
that set the stage, here. Read them on the booklet and they seem way
too sing-songy, almost silly, but hear them in the oh-so-romantic
context of the songs themselves, and they start seeming like the
mystic wisdom of the ancients, or some such. Having said that, having
me quote them would play more into the former idea than the latter,
perhaps not being the best evidence on hand to prove my point; but,
hey, what the fuck, this is a fatuous entertainment product review,
so, like, I'm gonna say that "a lady in need is guilty indeed" and "I
hold a record for being patient" and "let's drown in feathers and
down" and "for what it's worth, I love you/ and what is worse, I
really do" are some of the most precise, poignant, prettily-sung
pop-song lyrics currently kicking around in my head, coming from from
slyly insightful songs detailing continuing foolishness,
inexpressiveness between lovers, indulgence in sadness, and scaring
off a paramour by dropping the word "love," respectively. All of
which probably sounds cute and nice and such, like it's just like The
Cardigans of the past, only now they're paying off mortgages. But the
more this disc spins, the more this makes sense, and the more
Persson's lover's-world becomes clear, becomes vivid, its indulgences
in implied lyrical intimacies drawing you into the bed that is the
nexus to any lyrical disparity. Persson's words present this central
bed, as recurring thematic image, as place for: sleeping, thinking,
plotting, talking, collapsing, fucking, and just laying in all day
long. It's all of these things at various times. It's also, at
varying moments: hot, warm, and cool, with such terms, of course,
having naught to do with temperature.
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