Pop In The Mouth

I blame ABBA. If they hadn’t influenced hundreds of Swedes to revolve around pop music, our musical world may be a better place to listen; a place where the whistles of Peter Bjorn and John were never tumor-infused in ones memory and Ace of Base would have never seen the sign. So now our only hope is some brave soul to dismantle its stale genre physics. If Swiss pop music experimentations were conducted at CERN, native Kristoffer Ragnstam latest Wrong Side of the Room would be the clear Nobel Prize winner for deconstructing all that we knew the country’s pop scene to be and making it sound again. Now if they could just a-bomb the afterbirth of all that remains.

For his third studio album, he’s seemingly pinpointed the fuzz rock formula and gave it just the right amount of sun dried pop to sound familiar without being habitual. From the chunky synth of ‘Sorry For Being The Man of a 1000 Questions’ to the band’s Hall & Oats nod in the eccentric grooves of ‘Disco Fiasco’, Ragnstam is in control of this pop/rock experiment at all times. ‘Swing That Tambourine’ has moments of vocal glory like those found in similar The Format upbeat instances while rolling rockers like ‘May I Admire Her’ crank out edgy riffs; all of which dance around a reoccurring theme of need and acceptance.

Sure there are experimental oddities (‘Mee, If You Were A Melody’) and darker diy tomfoolery (‘Happy Mistakes’) but they never come close to denting the beautiful coat that spreads across Room. It’s an emotionally charged album that never exhausts or strains yours. Isn’t that all we’ve asked for from the Swedish music scene?

Sean Kendall