by Gerald Tan

They're from Jonkoping, Sweden, and if cocktail pop becomes the next musical fad, they will be the biggest band in the world in addition to being the first band on the moon. Or to have released an album called FIRST BAND ON THE MOON at any rate. The Cardigans play the sort of jazzy, immaculately-arranged, long out-moded music popular in cocktail lounges back in the '60s.

England's Mike Flowers pop (who took a cocktail pop version of an Oasis song into the British charts) and Japan's Pizzicato Five (who do songs with titles like "Twiggy Twiggy/Twiggy vs. James Bond") are contemporaries of the Cardigans... but they're less strange. One of the Cardigans' favourite movie is THE RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER. They're influenced by old cartoon theme music. They do jazz-lite Black Sabbath covers or acapella Ozzy Osborne songs on their albums.

For FIRST BAND ON THE MOON, their third album, the Sabbath anthem of choice is "Iron Man," and hearing Nina Persson sing "ooooh, Iron Man" and then tag a string of boop-boop-be-boop beep-beep-de-beep's to tne end of the song is bound to strike a perverse chord in anybody's soul. If you've heard the original and find yourself grinning like a lunatic even as you sing along to the Cardigans' take on it, don't worry, you're not the only one.

The opinions of the founding fathers of heavy metal on these dubious tributes have yet to be recorded, but personally I'd like to hear Ozzy sing background harmony on the chorus of "Lovefool," the first single from this album, a song so unfeasibly bouncy and full of inane "love me love me" lyrics that it deserves to be a hit. Like "Rise and Shine" from their previous album, LIFE, it's the kind of song that's so chirpy it musically gives you it's happy-happy-joy-joy message irregardless of what the lyrics are. If you don't succumb, you are either Dr. Chee Soon Juan before the Special Privileges Committee, or are just having a really really bad day.

Most of the album, however, doesn't share with "Lovefool" it's bubbly optimism. Even though some of the songs on FIRST BAND ON THE MOON swing in the same carefree, sunshine-in-the-countryside way of those found on LIFE, the general swing is towards an uncharacteristic, even disturbing melancholia. The horns and flutes are still there and are as candy-sweet as ever, but the beat is less irrepressible, the melodies are moodier. "Heartbreaker" works in a dolorous Black Sabbath guitar to lines like "Lies make me feel fine although it is sad," and "Losers" plainly features characters who are "fucked up and annoying." "Choke" ends the album with "We'll never have the guts to discover/we'll choke on it and die...." Ugly.

Elsewhere, things are more cheerfully off-centre. Nina Persson seems to be up to some deliberate mischief when she sings on the "kinky thoughts I'm thinking all because of you" on "Happy Meal II," and on "Been It" she tells her "Baby boy... I've been your sister, I've been your mistress/Maybe I was your whore/Who can ask for more." Who can indeed.

These are lean days when angst instead of humour and creativity seems to be thought of as musically credible. Eccentricity which isn't a one-off novelty is something of a precious commodity, and a band whose members like Thin Lizzy, yet can't play rock n' roll, and who hail from a country where "the sun is so dark," yet come up with songs that are full of sunshine, is a veritable godsend. And anyway, who can ever have enough cocktail pop covers of Black Sabbath. Ladies and gents, have some pink soda pop in a champagne rummer and drink to the Cardigans.