The Cardigans - First Band on the Moon (1996)

I've said it many times before, but the Swedes really know how to make good music. It's quite astonishing how many great albums come out of Sweden, considering the size of the country. The Cardigans is one of those very popular bands that people know at least around the Western world. Then again, most Americans will only know the biggest hit Lovefool. If your knowledge of The Cardigans is limited to this hit song, I seriously encourage you to check out other songs and albums as well. I mean, it's a good catchy tune, but in my opinion, it's not even close to being the best that the band has to offer. First Band on the Moon is the third studio album by The Cardigans and it's probably the first one that's really strong from start to finish. I perhaps slightly prefer the albums that came after, but this is still one of the finest albums from the band.



I've known The Cardigans pretty much from when they have been around. I remember my sister having at least one of their albums in the mid-90s and I remember seeing their music videos on MTV and them playing on the radio. It was a bit later, perhaps closer to 2000 when I got interested in their music though. I even very briefly attended a couple of band practices for The Cardigans cover band at the beginning of the millennium. It never really kicked off in the end.

The album starts with the song Your New Cuckoo, which sounds very similar to band's early hits from the first two albums. There's something about this light disco beat and sunny melodies that I connect with their early material. Been It builds on similar kind of foundation, but the slightly heavier instrumentation already points to the band's future where the songs took on, in my opinion, more interesting rock and Americana influences. Heartbreaker is the first song on the album that features links to the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. The intro goes in tune with Black Sabbath's self-titled song on their self-titled debut album. The quiet and wavy, quite jazzy song is quite far away from Black Sabbath's music, but I do love these types of covers or even just samples that are very different from the original. Happy Meal II shows some of the most honey-dripping vocals by the lovely Nina Persson. She was definitely something of a sex symbol for me and other teenage boys back in the day and not to a small part because of her soft voice. Never Recover picks up the tempo and shows the clear connections with The Cardigans and 60s flower power sounds. Step On Me is probably the song that sounds most like the band's later albums. It combines rock guitars with beautiful vocals and slow, quiet sequences that give more power to the guitar riffs when they emerge. Lovefool is probably still the most well-known song by The Cardigans globally. This disco hit has a very catchy chorus and that's probably why it became such a hit. I do like the song, but it's been a bit overplayed during the years. Losers is a very strange song. It has strange psychedelic sounds played on some type of vibraphone in the verse and the chorus is a proper contrast in terms of sounds. The Black Sabbath connections in Heartbreaker didn't end there. The Cardigans have also included a full cover version of Black Sabbath's Iron Man on the album. It's a completely redone stylistically, which is, I think, one of the best things you can do when writing cover songs. It's interesting that I have briefly played both in a Black Sabbath and The Cardigans cover band. Great Divide is one of my favourite songs on the album. It's soft fairytale like sound brings out Persson's beautiful vocals really wonderfully. The album ends with Choke, which has some bouncy rhythms that I would associate with Britpop bands that were popular in UK around the same time as this album was released.

I feel like I do have to include a link to the hit song Lovefool, because I remember the video vividly from my teenage years. The bad is playing in some sort of life-raft rescue boat that's actually a submarine. Nina Persson shows her incredibly blue eyes above water a few times. There's also a back story with a guy sending message in a bottle from a desert island to a woman longing on a pier somewhere. She does obviously gt the message towards the end of the song and the message says "I Love You".

The Cardigans really knows how to make catchy choruses. It's not necessarily about the chorus itself. It's about how you build up to the chorus. The verses are quite often strange and not even that melodic, but they build up perfectly to the chorus, which is always really catchy. I like this dramatic curve in the songs.

There's something very 90s about the sounds of this album and it sometimes sounds a bit outdated when I listen to it nowadays. That's probably why I prefer albums like Long Gone Before Daylight and Super Extra Gravity, because I feel like those albums are much more timeless. In any case, this album is the one that is probably most remembered globally and it's certainly among the best ones they released.

Listen to the album on Spotify.