"I Just Called to Say I Love You"-- not the saccharine Stevie Wonder hit, but the track from Pelle Carlberg's second solo album, In a Nutshell-- is the rare song that seems to perfectly encapsulate the mindset of a striving indie musician, which is another way of saying that it's just like any other Carlberg song. The Swedish pop artist, who formerly fronted the band Edson, writes imaginatively and wittily about his own career travails as well as the predicaments that accompany life in the pop trenches. But "I Just Called to Say I Love You", which does in fact reference the Wonder song, is particularly trenchant, in Carlberg's typically humorous way: "If I ever get happy, my songs will start to suck," he sings over chipper folk-pop accompaniment. "But if I ever get happy, I won't give a fuck." He'd sell out if he could find someone to buy in, but in the meantime, he realizes his struggles are pretty funny, which only makes them sadder. Which only makes them funnier.
It's not for lack of trying. Just as he did on his previous solo effort, 2005's Everything. Now! (which has the excellent critic takedown "Go to Hell, Miss Rydell"), Carlberg not only wrote all the songs, but also played most of the instruments, recorded the damn thing, produced it, mixed it, posed for the photos, and probably burned the files to disc with his eyeball lasers. Even with help from fellow Swede Henrik Nilsson, that's no small feat considering the busyness of most of these songs. Opener "Pamplona" involves a choir and members of the Academic Orchestra of Stockholm, even though he apparently runs with the bulls to prove he's not twee. "I Love You, You Imbecile" features a charming duet with Norwegian singer Ida Maria, and Carlberg is gentleman enough to let her steal the show-- although she sounds like she'd take it from him anyway. On the other hand, Carlberg is not averse to dialing everything down to just him and a piano or a guitar, as he does on "Why Do Today What You Can Put Off Until Tomorrow?" or the title track. Despite the threadbare cliché of its title (and Carlberg is careful enough to realize that bareness), "Even a Broken Clock (is Right Twice a Day)" makes his observations about his aging mother sound completely devastating.
That's one of the few tracks that doesn't address some aspect of his musical life, which he frets is sending him to the poorhouse: "If I couldn't sing, I'd probably make decent money," he sings on "Crying All the Way to the Pawnshop", which strikes the best balance between tremendously funny and tremendously sad, even if the title gives away the punchline. "Middleclass Kid" is a Peter Paul & Mary-style folk-pop number that describes his middle-class upbringing ("My mother was a housewife/ My dad worked for a bank"), then admits mock-proudly that his music can only appeal to middle-class kids like himself: "I can hear you in the first row/ I can hear you in the second row/ Tell me! Do you feel it too?" Probably great live, too.
These worries are no less real for being so well-expressed. "Showercream and Onions" details the hostility in his marriage, most likely fueled by his financial unfeasibility: "We're trying to lose some of that hatred/ But maybe it is way too late." In a Nutshell suggests his choice is obvious: music or happiness. If only it were that easy.
