According to the press release for The World Is Saved, Stina
Nordenstam’s sixth CD, “This is some of the most
hopeful music Stina Nordenstam has ever recorded.” In a
breathtaking feat of pretentiousness, the flackery is formatted as
free verse, concluding with these cringe-inducing, grammar-flouting
lines: “Listening to her music, reading her lyrics/Stina
Nordenstam dares to be this raw and complicated/This human./And
still without forgetting the importance of beauty.” Despite
the use of the third person, the bio was obviously written by
Nordenstam herself (because no one, not even a major-label
executive, would be dumb enough to pay for it). A bit of advice to
Ms. Nordenstam: Stifle the McKuenisms and stick to being the
camera-shy, tour-averse, studio-bound enigma that you are. You
earned your mystique with all those years of wearing weird wigs and
blowing off reporters and the Chemical Brothers; why squander your
cred now by yapping about your humanity?
Fortunately, the Swedish chanteuse is a much
better musician than she is a self-publicist. Although calling
these moody symphonic ballads “hopeful” is an
overstatement, they’re less angst-ridden than her usual fare,
especially if you focus on their warm, organic textures and languid
vocal melodies instead of their lyrics, which are
“hopeful” only by August Strindberg standards. Like so
many Scandinavian cult figures (hi, Björk!), Nordenstam is not
only a mope but also a pathological contrarian. Her last
full-length, This Is Stina Nordenstam, was a glossy cross-continental affair, buffed to
perfection by hotshot producers Tchad Black and Mitchell Froom; it
might have been dismissed as a sellout in some circles, if only it
had sold. Undeterred, the predictably unpredictable artiste went home to
Stockholm to write and record its follow-up, enlisting various
Swedish jazz and classical musicians to make a modest little album
about global salvation.
The World Is Saved sounds
at once voluptuous and constrained, its trumpets, woodwinds, violins,
and guitars undercut with edgy electronics, processed drums, and
disorienting pauses. On the flamenco-flavored opening track, “Get
On With Your Life,” piano, clarinet, and ethereal multitracked
vocals emerge and disappear in a fog of synths. Late-Romantic violin
flourishes and random knocks and thuds keep the studiously quiet
“I’m Staring Out the World” from subsiding into
silence. “From Cayman Islands With Love” pits a narcotic
horn section against dark and clattery percussion while Nordenstam
frets, in her trademark cutie-pie warble, “I’m on a beach,
the only one around who can’t enjoy the heat/I can’t
believe I paid for this, there’s nothing here I need.”
She’s a bit of a pill, our Stina — but in a hopeful, human,
raw, and complicated way, without forgetting the importance of beauty.
Too
prickly for the pop crowd, too polished for the indie-rockers,
Brendan Benson
writes songs that sound as if they ought to be hits — but
never are. This injustice flummoxes the critics, who get so worked
up on his behalf that they go into hyperbolic overdrive, spitting
out reckless comparisons with the Big Bs: the Beatles, the Beach
Boys, and Big Star. Thrust into the middle of the blessed
triumvirate, Benson can’t help but fall short, but that
doesn’t make his unpopular power-pop any less delightful. His
third CD, The Alternative to Love, crackles with fuzzy hooks and fizzy melodies. All
jangle and chime, Benson’s brand of pristine popcraft stopped
filling stadiums a couple of decades ago, but, at least in a just
world, it will never go out of style.
Brendan Benson performs at Blueberry
Hill’s Duck Room (6504 Delmar Blvd., in St. Louis) on
Wednesday, Aug. 3.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 3, 2005.
