THE CARDIGANS

At the Paradise Rock Club

Oct. 31, 1998

It was Halloween at the Paradise Rock Club, and the Cardigans had found a new costume: a mask of hissing, buzzing electronica over the Swedish band's familiar retro pop face. The catchy pop melodies still lurked behind this sizzling new facade, to be sure, but the Cardigans' fans--hip, Eurotrash 20-somethings--had to grapple with a whole new persona.

In a back room at the club, I chatted before the concert with the bassist/lyricist for the band, Magnus Sveningsson, and the guitarist/keyboardist, Lasse Johansson, about this massive reversal on their new album, Gran Turismo. Tall, with gelled-back hair and an intelligent worker's face, Svenningsson explained, "We and Tore [the producer] sat down, and we wanted something new. We even thought about changing producers, but [Johansson] felt the same way: the Cardigans' sound was a bit dull....So we bought a big computer and made this album." If the brave new Cardigans struggled at certain points, as when the electronics system abruptly failed in midsong, the sense of exploration at the concert was unmistakable and infectious.

Still, though the crowd treated the night like a wild masquerade ball, flaunting everything from glam, flamboyant goth-wear to afro-wigged funk getups to the occasional microchip clean room bodysuit, the band seemed bewildered, even a little subdued. Though winsome Emm Gryer, who opened the concert with a derivative, folky set, seemed entirely in her element with the crowd, the Cardigans were adorably incongruous in their neat, Eurotrash sweaters and sleek leather pants. In fact, as singer Nina Persson revealed during the performance, their native Sweden observes Halloween not as a night of costumed revelry, but as a solemn day of remembrance, putting flowers on the graves of ancestors. If the Cardigans' demeanor tended towards the sober, the music was never less than thrilling. Judging from Nina Persson's previously weightless vocals on such vintage pop songs as "Lovefool," I never expected her fiery onstage performance. Bristling with sexuality in her skin-tight leather pants, Persson sang with harnessed intensity and a flirtatious half-smile, as if her very appearance were a wicked, illicit joke between her and the audience. For the dark, menacing songs about the hardness of love that she presented, the coy, harsh delivery was like a sucker punch; she could talk about love's cruel ways not because she was the injured lover, but because she was the cruelty of love in the flesh.

In fact, though the Cardigans spun webs of retro romantic pop on their previous albums, this hard core was always there, beneath the sweet melodies; both Peter Svensson, lead guitarist and songwriter, and Sveningsson played in heavy metal bands before forming the Cardigans. Sveningsson explained: "We wanted to become a pop band; [Peter and I] played in individual hard rock bands back in the '80s. We met because we needed someone new to play with. Peter is still in that scene, but I have found other things to listen to." Keyboardist Johansson had a more pithy account of new, harder Cardigans: "We're back, and we're loud!"

Proclaiming this new sonic intensity, the Cardigans opened with a searing interpretation of their new song "Paralyzed." Like debris from the factory of the next millennium, the song burst with a rumbling electronic landscape and apocalyptic guitar chords. Other songs, like the guitar-driven "Erase/Rewind" and the ethereal "Higher," were transformed by this ominous aesthetic into manifestoes of the dark, as Persson's voice became barbed and deceptive. Even "Lovefool," the classic, buoyant paean to romantic masochism, was edged with rougher guitars and a surprising growl from Persson, pronouncing the deeper power dynamics that were unexpressed in the original recording. The Cardigans got a brand new bag.

The regrettably brief concert ended with an encore cover of Ozzy Osbourne's "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" replete with wailing guitars and a three minute code of distorted power chords. The fans seemed dazed, but not unimpressed. Even those who came for the kitsch stayed for the clamor. This wasn't the Cardigans of "Lovefool," but the confidence of this heavier aesthetic was winning. Johansson proclaimed, "People may think we are trying to get more commercial, but we don't make music for a special kind of audience. We make music for ourselves, and we wanted this sound. Lots of violence." Loud guitars, ominous techno noises, and rough ideas: This, then, was the new guise of the Cardigans-the horsemen of the apocalypse, straight out of Sweden.