The Cardigans: "Gran Turismo"

Thirteen months before from the new millennium began, five Swedish kids released their fourth album, Gran Turismo.

A few short years before, the band looked like this:

And they sounded like this:

Having built their indie-darling cred on two albums of wry, witty, hip, lushly orchestrated, carefully-layered songs — a bit of The Sugarcubes or The Sundays crossed with Burt Bacharach — their third album moved closer to mainstream “alternative” format music. However that album, “First Band on the Moon,” contained a surprise: a “one-hit wonder,” “Lovefool.” Snapped up and integrated into 1994’s “Romeo + Juliet” juggernaut, a shy indie-pop band that had flirted with being studio-only was thrust into visibility they hadn’t quite counted on.

In that rush of sweet saccharine Scandanavian glory, I even had the good fortune to see the band at Austin’s Liberty Lunch, I’m told, on the 15^th of February, 1997.

Before we consider their fourth album, Gran Turismo, let’s engage in an imaginary adventure. If one could hop in a time machine to hear what their fifth album, Long Gone Before Daylight would sound like on the day before Gran Turismo’s release, one would scarce believe that it was the same band.

Yes, it was a soft, clear, female singer, but the layers, the orchestration, and the maximalism of it would be gone. Instead, the music would sound muffled and delicately stuffed into coconut-shell, over-the-ear headphones. The topics could have scarce been more different: earlier songs had been about garden parties, these later songs feature gripping soliloquies on partner abuse that are as riveting and painful as The Kids by Lou Reed.

From an artistic point of view: What happened? Could we see the seeds of this artistic evolution somewhere? How did the literal ice-skating pixie on the cover of their second album, “Life,” become a dialogue writer for a Liv Ullman character?

Or how did she wind up doing an homage to Polanski’s “Repulsion?”

What is the pivot point? When did they trade (Gordon’s) garden parties for Bergman’s beach?^* The answer: Gran Turismo.

While firmly a part of the late-90s (hints of proto-Nü-Metal, UK house, trip-hop, and a mature US alternative top 40 market), the musical cleverness, the songwriting capability, the playing with dueling tempos all show that the Cardigans were never just a pop band. They were always smarter than they ought have been by (at least) half, and when the joke wasn’t funny anymore, they were willing to dump their souls sans apologies and them speak for themselves.

For its ability to project an unimaginable growth as artists and for its being a vessel for remembering the pivot from pre- to post-millennium anxiety, Let’s un-forget The Cardigans’ masterpiece, Gran Turismo.

Cover

I think that the album cover is impeccably beautiful with a distinctly modernist character like an Olivetti Valentine typewriter. While a closer review will reveal some surprising depth to it, on first blush, it seems flawless.

I think the composition is glorious. The sunrise (or sunset?) above clouds recalls that part in a flight to Europe where their day crashes into the traveler’s dismally-long night and sleep deprivation falters under the sun’s circadian blast.

The type is simple and plain and gloriously white Helvetica. It recalls airports or train stations of Europe and extends that feeling one is traveling .

And atop this crisp and heavenly scene (prefiguring the album’s song “Higher”), we have a composition of stunning portraits of our quintet.

While it is easy to get lost in the doe-eyed beatific portrait of Our Lady of Jönköping, Nina Persson, all the portraits of the quintet are beautiful. Scandinavian good looks, cheekbones, and light-filled eyes give the cover a glossiness like an editorial fashion magazine.

So while the album cover’s execution is technically sublime, there’s something subtle afoot: one of the portraits is not like the others. With the ridiculously symmetrical Persson at center, a visual rhythm is established from center to right (to bandmates Lagerberg and Svensson). But to Persson’s left, bassist Magnus Sveningsson’s portrait is not on the same vertical level. It’s not honoring the symmetry, while to Sveningsson’s left, keyboardist Lars-Olof Johansson’s portrait tries to recover the rhythm.

It’s a subtle visual cue that amidst all this beauty, both fleshly-incarnated and ethereal, perfection and imperfection will mix, become ordered, and then resolve to disorder over-and-over. Nervousness and instability are infused in the music.¹

The Music

Looking at their first three albums, the majority of songwriting was claimed by Sveningsson and Svensson. In the second and third album, Persson claimed more writing credits. With Gran Turismo, she claimed writing credits on every song except the album’s lone instrumental. What’s fascinating is that we were finally seeing inside Nina after three albums, and it was complex. Suddenly she was neither the “Life” pixie ingenue nor the Madonna in the clouds of the cover. The face in the cover’s portraits wasn’t merely shrewdly putting the pretty-girl first. This was a woman’s face numb after crying her eyes out, stunned and exhausted after having wrung out every bit of angst about fitting into the world that she could muster.

Said Svensson of the title Gran Turismo:

… the title suits this very album extremely well because the album is pretty much about trying to find your place in the world.

As a theme, Gran Turismo is about boldly stepping into the world as a young person, and then discovering that you aren’t quite so sure about the steps you just made. This theme winds through many of the songs. It also calls back to the visual element: Sveningsson’s not matching with the default program. This is a work about being unable to escape the feeling that one simply doesn’t quite fit, or that there isn’t a way to get comfortable. Here are my current-era reaction takes to the album’s songs.

“Paralyzed”

This is where your sanity gives in
and love begins.

Showing off their arranging skills, the first number opens with a whistled with ambient dissonance soundscape and then abruptly cuts into a harpsichord-esque Baroque progression with Persson’s silky vocals.

It turns out that this Baroque section will serve as the song’s chorus. The song then breaks into a bridge with noisy dirty guitar effects recalling something from Bjork’s “Post” or “Telegram” that continues through the first verse. Then, again, abruptly, we break back to the Baroque progression chorus.

The Cardigans are conditioning us to expect thesis/anti-thesis pairings throughout the album. The see-saw continues through another verse and chorus pair before and, with one minute left on the song, the three portions align together and the disparate styles and tempos seem to become one. In many ways, it recalls a DJ setup with two turntables blending songs together. That said, here the opening ambient sound effects, a “third turntable” are also overlain to create a beautiful unity.

But this is an album about unity’s inevitable collapse, with only seconds left 1n the song, the refrain that cuts between motifs breaks out with the dirty guitar backing: “the sweetest way to die.”

“Erase / Rewind”

Yes I said it’s fine before
But I don’t think so no more
…I’ve changed my mind
I take it back:
Erase and rewind

With “die” still hanging in the air, the gentle percussive lightly trip-hop-esque percussion track starts. The keyboards are so gentle and so appropriate I have to really appreciate Johansson’s taste and restraint. As with so much on this album, Person’s vocal opening “Mm-mm” is complimented by an acoustic strings riff with a noisier, distorted counter keyboard progression.

Thematically, “Erase / Rewind” fits with the “finding on’s place” theme. The song features a gentle admonition with a break to a harder-edged hook for each chorus (as quoted above). For a band, “Erase / Rewind” must have felt like a perfect metaphor for learning, growing, regretting, and wishing to undo.

The heavy bass line on this track is essential to giving the track its depth and intensity. In many places, it creates an urgency and a sonic intimacy that compels the listener forward.

“Explode”

You rely on
what you’ll get high on
and you’ll last just as long as it serves you
Explode or implode.
We will take care of it
… yes we will carry you.

It’s possibly my favorite track on the album. Again we’re in a sonically intimate space with Persson as she again presents another pairing of verbs to us: with Erase / Rewind behind us, our choices grow more dire: Implode or Explode.

It’s a perfect complement to “Erase / Rewind,” again the bassline is gentle and driving. Again the chorus features a Baroque-esque harpsichord-like counter-melody over the chorus that breaks from the relatively minimalist verses. As Persson gently asks “Can we do anything for you now” we again hear the technique of mixing all the phrases together: the simple verse melody returns, the counter melody returns, and a bubbly, noise-rock guitar (recalling Johnny Greenwood’s early work in Radiohead). The tempos and voices re-unite in the fashion we heard in “Paralyzed.”

And in the final 20 seconds, the voices again dissolve into dissonance. The Cardigans have now told us twice: the center cannot hold.

“Starter”

I was young and I have changed my mind
and I’m leaving everything behind
new beginning again - a bit closer
new beginning again - a little bit closer
new beginning again - a bit closer to the end

The patterns are now becoming clearer and more familiar. Persson opens a song with a plaintive point of view or assertion with minimal hints of the harmony. We wait for the dissonances to arrive, they do, they then surprisingly unify, before falling apart again.

Lyrically we again see another dyad: a new beginning and the end to extend implode/explode and erase/rewind.

“Hanging Around”

I hang around for another round.
I’m hanging on
to the same. old. song. Until
someone stops me

Opening with an instrumental conversation between keyboard and guitar atop a fast electronic percussion hinting at the house influences of the day, Persson invites us into the song:

I wonder what it’s like
seeing through your eyes
You offered me to have a try
but I was always late
The filters that I use give me an excuse…

And in comes a big bass drum to the drum line, thickening with its weight and again the heavy driving bass comes in to put a breathless urgency behind the delivery. It’s only there for the second half of the verse before we break into chorus that has a soaring guitar voicing to accompany the world-weary delivery of Persson:

I hang around
for another round…(2x)
I’m hanging on
to the same old song
…Until, something stops me

The song also closes with a noisy, bend- and pinch-harmonic heavy guitar solo that shows the influence Radiohead was having on Svensson.

“Higher”

Conceptually the song that most captures the album cover. In fact, the lines from it are in the bottom-left of that gorgeous album cover.

Come take us out of here
take us anywhere — oh yeah;

Again it’s the close and intimate cold open with Nina and a very simple accompaniment. As the chorus opens we’re given a wonderful display of the band’s mastery of dissonance. It works by giving the release note we expect, but then it immediately steps into a strange interval that throws us off-balance, then we get two more resolving changes. The arrangement then works the same resolve, dissonant, resolve, resolve pattern before we return back to the verses. I love this work of dissonance, expectation, and stymieing. It’s such a clever sonic way to recall the imbalance and instability that has been in every aspect of this album.

There’s a particularly beautiful passage with a pizzicato bass and vocal layering at 3:29 which recalls the resolve, dissonant, resolve, resolve pattern that’s some sort of broken chorale for humans in a broken world.

Rhythm-wise the drums recall “Massive Attack” of the “Teardrop” era. It’s particularly catch-able in the outro of the song.

“Marvel Hill”

I generally call this my least-favorite track, but even as I replayed it to make sure I thought that, I came to still like it. The song opens with time dissonances between a mechanical cymbal, and time-dissonant guitar and keyboard, and another cold-open from Nina. But at 1:34 in a bass-lead riff modulates briefly to suggest that a resolution might be possible. But, we’re not rescued. Our trained ears are expecting another versus until another resolution will be attempted, but suddenly Nina whispers in stereo-right:

I don’t need this
I don’t need it
I need more

It’s that damned cymbal-monkey that won’t stop dragging the time forward! Why won’t it let us have our harmonic resolution? We’re halfway through and the machinery of our resolution remains invisible.

But at 2:41 the “I don’t need this” plea returns and finally we’re given our resolution note at 2:52, after being dragged there with our heels in by a cymbal-clanging chimp. Our rescuer is a theremin-approximating keyboard that modulates the key and the lyrics gain a new tint:

(I don’t need this)
To good to be true
To good to ignore
I don’t need this
I need so much more
It’s too much to ask for

Those last two words sound like utter disappointment. Another modulation happens and we’re back to the cymbals dragging us uncomfortably forward like a death march into the future. The song merely fades out as a hint of its incessance, recalling Schopenhauer’s Will.

“My Favourite Game”

This was certainly “the hot single” and it featured a controversial video which culminates in Persson’s suicide by unsafe driving.

It feels like a conventional song: it opens big with a teasing percussion, it features an hooky riff, versus where you expected prechorus in a whisper, and a memorable chorus. While justifiably praised, it’s also the least remarkable or least Gran Turismo specific track. It fits within Gran Turismo, but it seems to have less to do with the larger work. That said, it’s got a hell of a beat and features the wry songwriting that popped so much in the retro / lounge-y era:

I don’t know what I’m working for
another you so I could love you more
I really thought that I could take you there
but my experiment is not getting us anywhere

I always imagine Persson is thinking of her love for this person as having become a monster of its own, Frankenstein style and it is literally destroying them.

“Do You Believe”

I think this probably has to be my least favorite. The music is beautiful and features a church-like organ progression. Great. In the song, Persson lists several hopes that humankind has based on “love” with the punchline (recalling the first two albums) being her sarcasm (“Oh I really, really hope so) and then her honesty (“But I don’t think so.”)

I get the message, these messy dyads aren’t going to get synthesized to harmony by some ideal or supernatural force. While I think the song is merely OK, it serves an important function for the album: it sets up a happy(ish) ending in the final lyrical song.

“Junk of the Hearts”

We’ve had dissonances aplenty and after the vaguely bratty sarcasm of “Do You Believe,” there’s not much hope left for the listener. The Cardigans make it up to us by opening up with a gentle trip hop beat with a delicate ballad. If anything, this song sounds like maturity, it sounds like self-soothing, it sounds like, well, communication and hope.

I’ve given all of me
and you care for more
Weird how this make us feel…
insecure. That’s what friends are for

It’s still wry, but it is earnest. This angst, these difficulties, these dyads, they are all the Junk of the Hearts.

Musically, we have harp like orchestration, glissandos and we close on an upward note before fading into the outro instrumental “Nil.”

What Came Next

While I don’t regard it as a forgotten album, as I don’t consistently return to it like I do Gran Turismo, the next Cardigans album was the newly-minted adults of the Cardigans coming to a reckoning about who they were in life and who they were in the band. Persson described it as a kind of psychological therapy session on the level of Metallica’s shrink-drama “Some Kind of Monster.”

But having written this post, I can see the link from Gran Turismo to Long Gone Before Daylight: the perennial difficulty of genuine human-to-human contact and communication. It no longer feels surprising to me, then, to note that the single from Long Gone Before Daylight was this emotionally sledgehammer-heavy single: Communication

I’ve seen you
I know you but I don’t know
how to connect. So I disconnect.

The heart breaks. But somewhere in the long, Swedish night hope stubbornly refuses to die.

Well this is an invitation.
It’s not a threat.
If you want communication,
that’s what you get.
I’m talking and talking but I don’t know
how to connect…
And I hold the record for being patient
…with your kind of hesitation
I need you, you want me, but I don’t know how to connect
so I disconnect.

The Cardigans’ final album “Super Extra Gravity” would follow Long Gone Before Daylight in terms of maturity but the band’s internal cohesion was fraying. The songs, while well-crafted and fun just aren’t as epic as darn-near the entire track list of Gran Turismo. That said, “I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer” is a lot of fun.

Looking around the internet, the general feeling is that Life is The Best Cardigans Album. Bassist Sveningsson holds the best to be Long Gone Before Daylight. I can see Sveningsson’s argument, based on the maturity present, but for me, an album that I’m thankful I did not miss, even as the rest of the world did, was Gran Turismo.

Reunion hopes are non-existent as the members seem to have moved on. But to talk with Svensson, Sveningsson, or Persson about these motifs and how it happened would be a dream.

Footnotes

• * It’s worth noting that Persson suffered a cancer diagnosis shortly after Gran Turismo and this surely changed her outlook on things. Discussing changes in hair color, appearance, self-presentation, etc. should always be sensitive to the scope and fear she and her loved ones lived through in the post-Gran Turismo era

1. Years later, I learned that Magnus was suffering from a panic disorder and a breakup.

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