For any bilingualists blessed with Swedish and English faculties, Peter Morén's Broken Swenglish Vol 1. will be more of a dynamic experience. Though, others shouldn’t worry about what the title implies: the four songs on the EP are sung entirely in English. They were, however, originally recorded in Swedish, found across a pair of Morén solo albums from his home country, released outside his main gig singing and playing guitar in Peter Bjorn & John. 2010's I spåren av tåren and 2012's Pyramiden sound good: loud, soul-pop departures from the fingerpicked folk on his loosely conceptual debut solo album, The Last Tycoon. If you happened to pick up those Swedish-language albums, the music on Broken Swenglish is nearly identical to them, but the lyrics have shifted a bit. The words aren't necessarily direct translations, but expansions and interpretations stemming from the comfort of writing in his first language.
Morén has said in interviews that he feels more at ease with Swedish lyrics, that writing in English comes with too much pressure. It's an admirable admission that also highlights the cracks in Morén's work. Leaving the acoustic fare behind, he shifts back to power pop songcraft, properly constructed, and sticky with hooks. A bemused, almost cynical melancholy settles over the album, though it doesn’t quite dance with the same kind of jangly magic like, say, the Go-Betweens’ or the Zombies. But Morén plays to that same kind of internal bounce—an energy that never leaves the songs too limp. There’s an ode to inertia, cheekily titled “Going Places” where his voice adopts an edge that thankfully overpowers that Brit-pop reverb he's been using since the first PB&J album. It helps push the song along to its end, where we once again are met with his whistle (you know the one), though here it's strident, dissonant, and not-s0 radio-friendly.
Little moments on the album do peer above the mundane, like the waltzing “To Catch Up With You”. It’s a lilting tune that mimics strolling in and out of cafes and down wet, cobblestone streets. Just be careful of this landmine the middle: "The pressure of lasting a lifetime is too hard for anyone to take/ I wouldn't want you to fake your innermost longings" because it may rip you right out of the daydream. In the past there’s been some some gems and clunkers in Morén's lyrics, and while there’s no big winces here, there’s nothing that digs into the heart either. "Constant Reaction" is a driving socio-political Pulp homage that's too cluttered to make you think, and "Say My Name" is just too neutral and static to make you feel.
And there you have it. At four songs and 12 minutes, and with no “new” songs really, Morén appears to be testing the waters to see how these adaptations will play to a wider, English-speaking audience. The real fun would be to see how the lyrics shifted, but with only a dubious Google Translator at my side, it's hardly something I could comment on. It seems that his Swedish tongue might be more silver than is English. For instance, the Swedish version of "Going Places" is titled "Erik M. Nilsson" after a little-known Swedish filmmaker, whose name is absent from the remake. It's a good example of the kind of alluring specificity that's absent from Broken Swenglish, which is ultimately a reminder of what the idiom isn't: found in translation.
