Nina Persson, the lead singer of the group, has quite a seductive voice. I remember many guys being quite crazy about her when I was growing up. She was the front person of the band always. Even though she didn't really write the songs at least at this point, she was the only person people normally knew from the band.
The album cover is quite a typical debut album for a Nordic band. You can see that they haven't used fancy graphic designer agencies for this cover. It's probably just a photo one of the band members had and they decided to use if in the cover. It shows how even quite professional bands start their careers quite amateurishly compared to UK and US artists. I kind of really like the fact that there's a home-made feel to these kinds of albums.
The album starts with one of the greatest songs on it, Sick & Tired. This song has a wavy groove about it and the flute in the beginning reminds me of Jethro Tull a little bit. Already the first song is quite seductive and playful showing all of the potential the band was to reach later on. Black Letter Day goes a bit jazzier with the bass line guiding the song with strange rhythms. In the Afternoon has a great chorus that sounds like those idle days of the youth when you could just hang out without feeling like you were wasting your life. Over the Water goes a bit progressive rock again with a recorder and strange rhythms in the intro. There are also some raw sounding horns later on in the song. After All... is a jazzy ballad that has a feel of old Hollywood films. It's amazing how much intimacy you can include in a recording. Cloudy Sky has some quite cheesy guitars, which I'm not too fond of. All in all, this is one of the most boring songs on the album. Our Space goes a bit experimental. There are some psychedelic melodies and strange sounds in the song. Rise & Shine is an uptempo song that reminds me of indie rock bands of the mid-00s. In that sense, this song is really ahead of its time. Celia Inside brings back the wavy jazz atmosphere and feel of fresh bright morning. I love unexpected and strange cover versions of songs. This can definitely be said about The Cardigans version of Black Sabbath's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. It's amazing how easily this heavy metal song moulds into a jazzy pop song. Seems Hard has more orchestration than most other songs on the album, specifically a horn section. The album ends with appropriately named song Last Song. This song seems like a psychedelic lullaby.
I remember many Cardigans music videos from later albums, but I'm not sure if I've ever seen music videos from this album before. The simple music video for Sick & Tired shows the band playing on a cliffside next to the sea. They all look really young and really Nordic. The video also features a pre-teen kid fooling around on the beach and around town. He ends up beating up a doll's house with a stick.
Me and a few of my friends attempted to start a cover band for The Cardigans at some point, but we only ever had one practice with it. It was difficult to make the songs sound that good. It would've been really nice to play some of these songs live though. I'm afraid I wasn't that good of a bass player yet at that time.
I rarely listen to full albums by The Cardigans anymore, but whenever I hear some of their songs, I have to admit that they were really good. Their sounds are maybe very 90s and in that sense they haven't aged too well, but the songs themselves are quite ageless in their style.
Listen to the album on Spotify.
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