I was pretty sure I liked Sweden's Hello Saferide for her lyrics, mostly. Under that name, singer/songwriter Annika Norlin's 2006 U.S. debut, Introducing..., set out a personality that won me over like late-night conversations with a new close friend-- full of warmth, humor, and the kind of gnawing insecurities that tend to interest me more than caricatured angst or weepy bathos. Instead of asking what drew me in about her almost defiantly direct indie pop sound, I found myself wondering how her words managed to make her come across as some kind of Scandinavian kindred spirit, and whether other people would be moved in the same subtle way.
A language barrier hasn't stopped Pitchfork's growing cohort of Swede fanciers from drooling all over groups like Dungen and Vapnet (honorable mench: [ingenting]), just as it didn't stop many of us from digging the Welsh-language outings of Super Furry Animals or Gorky's Zygotic Mynci a decade earlier. Still, I wasn't sure I'd get as excited about a Norlin record without being able to understand her touchingly weird words about AltaVista stalking, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and those first nervous steps toward true human intimacy.
Needn't have worried. On Norlin's Swedish-language debut as Säkert! (literally, "Safe!"), she's back with more of her alternately giddy and aching fresh-air pop, shading the AM-friendly side of the 60s through a post-Sarah Records lens to sit alongside the likes of Sambassadeur, Vapnet, or Acid House Kings. Perhaps producer Henrik Oja of "outlaw mutation boogie" band the Spacious Mind enlivens Norlin's aesthetic with an outsider's touch, after another fragile popster, Niccokick's Andreas Söderlund, produced Introducing... Still, the Skittles-colored arrangements here are merely whizzbang fancier, not really much different: acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, piano, tambourine, glockenspiel, and touches of programming, Rhodes, or quirkier instrumentation like accordion or clarinet.
Odds are Norlin's frank voice and candy-twirling melodies explain more of what I like about her songs than I'd ever expected. First single "Vi Kommer Att Dö Samtidigt" ("We're Going to Die at the Same Time, You and I", according to an English-language cover version) certainly suggests as much, even though I now know its peppiness matches a lyric about friendship that's not nearly as creepy as its title suggests-- or, creepy in a cute way, at least. Norlin's electro-pop duet with Markus Krunegard from Laakso can stand up with countryfolk Club 8, and her pairing with Vapnet's Martin Hanberg, "Sanningsdan", is as head-noddingly catchy as tracks like that band's "Rådhusgatan".
While a clutch of faster songs recall the infectious energy of Hello Saferide's "My Best Friend", slower piano waltz "Ditt Kvarter" comes closer to the quiet charm of Canadian folk-popper Christine Fellows' "Paper Anniversary". Clarinet-driven "Du Kanske Var På Holmön" evokes the eerie hangover of Introducing...'s "Saturday Nights". Finally, spare closer "Är Du Fortfarande Arg?" is reminiscent of the first Norlin song I ever heard, "The Quiz", and at last makes me start copying the lyric sheet into online translators-- to little avail. "If I blush when I sing, that's good," Norlin has said of the lyric-writing process behind Säkert! (at least, that's my best translation). That blush was part of what caused her English-language songs to glow, but for now just the sound of Säkert! might be enough.
