vs. The Snow

Album review

21st century electro-pop is now well established enough to be its own self-referential genre and there's no question that the Swedish duo the LK knows its many forebears. But as with many performers in the field, it's not just about applying electronics to pop as it is applying pop to a variety of possible contexts, and given Sweden's own musical obsession with sweet and tuneful pop in any number of contexts, it's no surprise that The LK vs. the Snow is an album that practically revels in its sweetly sung catchiness. A song like the opening "Anorak and Other Complicated Words Starting with an A" relies on a string loop that sounds like a Beatles homage more than anything else -- or maybe a Jellyfish homage at that -- while everything from a-ha to early Depeche Mode to the Cardigans to New Order to more immediate forebears like the Postal Service and the Magnetic Fields can be heard in the swirl. Yet for all this knowing placement, the band does have the initial strength to establish what might yet be their own sound, at once of their home country and with worldwide accessibility. With a generally clear division between Lindefelt as melt-in-mouth vocalist and Fredrik as the multi-instrumentalist, the two definitely have a sweetly giddy side to their confections but there's just enough propulsive muscle in the arrangements to make for an interesting tension. Some of the beats are big enough to imagine them pumping out of a car somewhere (even if it's a Volvo), as on "Down by Law" and "Tandem Bikes," while the filter touches on songs like "Stop Being Perfect," to name one example of many, adds a disorienting wooze that's quite attractive. At the same time, sometimes things might just be too precious for words -- calling songs "Eurovision" and "Tamagotchi Freestyle" confirms that twee never dies; it just finds a new nostalgic home as each generation grows up.

© Ned Raggett /TiVo