After a bit of time away, Swedish indie-pop aesthetes the Radio Dept. returned last year with their third proper album, the excellent Clinging to a Scheme. It was a profile-raising breakthrough release for both the band and the Labrador label. But the band didn't exactly sound joyful about the whole situation: The record sounded reluctant and distantly depressed, and various interviews revealed their own distaste for the Internet and self-publicity in general.
Sweden's Acid House Kings are another band on Labrador with an uneasy relationship to ambition, but they sound happier about what they're doing. The band, which features Labrador head Johan Angergård as a member, is back with its first LP in six years, Music Sounds Better With You. Like the Radio Dept. last year, AHK have returned after a layoff with their strongest-sounding record and a newfound vitality. The band's previous releases were low-key and shy-sounding-- when vocalist Julia Lannerheim first appeared on 1997's Advantage Acid House Kings, she sounded reserved and afraid to speak up. There's no stage fright here: the production is bright, the arrangements propulsive and peppy, and Lannerheim and co-vocalist Niklas Angergård sound confident in their newly strong voices.
Considering how long the band's been doing this (20 years and counting), such an outgoing attitude is a little surprising. "Maturity" in popular music is sometimes associated with mellowing and settling down. Very little on this record scans a "old," but the concept of growing up-- and how those shifts affect the way you live and love-- is a recurring theme. Lannerheim bemoans the 9-to-5 grind and wonders whether it's making her insane in "(I'm In) A Chorus Line", while on "I Just Called to Say Jag Ålskar Dig"-- "I love you" in Swedish, of course-- Niklas sends a dispatch to his dearest from a business trip, wondering "is it really me in the conference room?" On the charmingly upbeat highlight "Are We Lovers or Are We Friends?", he caps a slow dance by admitting that "I know I've held my hopes so high/ I almost forget that we're gonna die."
So one way to settle into adulthood is to fall in love-- with love itself, and with your record collection, too. Music Sounds Better With You is a mash note to a wide range of indie-pop-- alternately buzzy, peppy, shy, melodramatic, and grandly sweeping. Each approach is rendered with heart and never feels rote. That album title, it turns out, isn't a reference to the beloved Stardust song; it's about the joy that comes from creating music with others. Acid House Kings might be addressing the sentiment to each other and they might be addressing it to us, but either way, it rings true.
