Pop that summons the word “cute” has a tendency to nauseate. If executed with the correct ratio of candy to content, however, it may persuade. The Scandinavians have proved effective in this area and Jonas Angergård and Karolina Komstedt, from the south of Sweden, add to the region’s good stock. Their latest album sits somewhere between The Cardigans and St Etienne, a very conscious electro-pop tinge coming to the fore, especially on numbers such as the toy town hi-NRG of “Taking My Time”.
The duo have been around for years and this is their eighth album. Angergård is also a member of mid-level indie outfit Acid House Kings but where Club 8 began as a guitar-y post-C86 affair, they later grasped there was a whole heap of similar twee larks to be had embracing the lounge scene, combining crackly old easy listening with bedroom angst and computer beats. Above The City veers between crisp electro-pop and sunset Balearica, touching retro territory akin to that mined by College (the French producer who made his name with the soundtrack to the Ryan Gosling flick Drive).
Tracks such as “I’m Not Gonna Grow Old” and “Less Than Love” appear to be direct tributes to Madonna and Cyndi Lauper at their most frivolous, and emanate the consequent overblown cheesiness, but more often than not the pair summon up something with a sharper, modernist style and thoughtfulness. “Into Air” is controlled but driven and dynamic, as is “You Could Be Anybody”, which contains lyrics that muster a lazy mood of beachside nightlife and lovers' intrigue (“You could be anybody/you could have everyone here”), and there are more in this vein. There’s also a dose of saccharine, of course, but for every inessential sliver of tinny Eighties kitsch there’s a little beauty such as impeccable two minute head-nodder “Travel”.
Watch the video for "Stop Taking My Time"
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