Word: lovefool
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Dates: during 1998-1998
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...night of costumed revelry, but as a solemn day of remembrance, putting flowers on the graves of ancestors. If the Cardigans' demeanor tended towards the sober, the music was never less than thrilling. Judging from Nina Persson's previously weightless vocals on such vintage pop songs as "Lovefool," I never expected her fiery onstage performance. Bristling with sexuality in her skin-tight leather pants, Persson sang with harnessed intensity and a flirtatious half-smile, as if her very appearance were a wicked, illicit joke between her and the audience. For the dark, menacing songs about the hardness of love that...
...factory of the next millennium, the song burst with a rumbling electronic landscape and apocalyptic guitar chords. Other songs, like the guitar-driven "Erase/Rewind" and the ethereal "Higher," were transformed by this ominous aesthetic into manifestoes of the dark, as Persson's voice became barbed and deceptive. Even "Lovefool," the classic, buoyant paean to romantic masochism, was edged with rougher guitars and a surprising growl from Persson, pronouncing the deeper power dynamics that were unexpressed in the original recording. The Cardigans got a brand...
...ended with an encore cover of Ozzy Osbourne's "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" replete with wailing guitars and a three minute code of distorted power chords. The fans seemed dazed, but not unimpressed. Even those who came for the kitsch stayed for the clamor. This wasn't the Cardigans of "Lovefool," but the confidence of this heavier aesthetic was winning. Johansson proclaimed, "People may think we are trying to get more commercial, but we don't make music for a special kind of audience. We make music for ourselves, and we wanted this sound. Lots of violence." Loud guitars, ominous techno...
...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...
...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...