Word: persson
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...Cardigans split their set about evenly between songs from the new album and the older, effervescent singles. Lead singer Nina Persson, fetchingly attired in black tanktop and leather pants, delivered the band's tongue-in-cheek takes on modern love with charming, faux naivete. Flanked on either side by guitarist Peter Svensson and keyboardist Lars-Olaf Johnasson, The Cardigans were an interesting triptych to watch: Svensson dancing about his red guitar, Persson doing her catwoman-thing with the mic stand and Johansson good-humoredly adding the dark swatches of soundscape...
...music snobbery aside, the mobs of fratboys who descended on the Roxy had probably come with only one thing in mind: Nina Persson herself. To paraphrase Garth of Wayne's World, if Nina Persson were a president, she'd be Babe-raham Lincoln. This fact was not lost on the predominantly male crowd, all clearly aiming for a peek at the infamously gorgeous Persson. But Nina would have none of their adulation. Halfway into the show, one fratboy climbed onto the shoulders of his large friend and unrolled a sign beseeching, "NINA KISS ME." After ignoring him for several minutes...
...bodysuit, the band seemed bewildered, even a little subdued. Though winsome Emm Gryer, who opened the concert with a derivative, folky set, seemed entirely in her element with the crowd, the Cardigans were adorably incongruous in their neat, Eurotrash sweaters and sleek leather pants. In fact, as singer Nina Persson revealed during the performance, their native Sweden observes Halloween not as a 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...
...their new song "Paralyzed." Like debris from the 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...
...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...