LAD's fourth album starts out like the previous two releases. An uneasy (and sometimes ugly) pop / rock hybrid, struggling to find a sure identity.
Then suddenly on the third track, '
Pages' it transforms itself totally, completely, into edgy but utterly marvellous contemporary pop music, with a few old school touches to make a connection with us, er . . . more mature listeners.
In other words, it turns into '
The Gift, Part 2' . . . one of the best modern pop/AOR (okay, with a little rock'n'roll) albums so far this decade. I'm guessing that, had it not been for the success of LAD in Japan, this most certainly would have been recorded as a
Mikael Erlandsson solo effort. Proof, if any were needed - in a band that includes Marcel Jacob, Andy Malacek and Jamie Borger - is the fact that all but one of the songs are written by Erlandsson and his longtime producers, Torbjorn Wassenius and Claes Andreasson.
This time around, Wassenius and Andreasson have relegated the rest of the band to supporting roles, surrounding Erlandsson with sweet, densely packed bgvs, sweeping strings, bubbling keyboards and dancing, prancing guitars, all set to a simple yet solid percussive thump.
On the majority of the remaining tracks this works a treat. On a sizeable minority, it goes a step further.
Let's talk about them.
'
Pages' and '
Saving My Soul' are like something Max Martin and/or Andreas Carlsson would have written and/or produced, with an extra helping of melodic rock stirred into the mix. That sound a million bands have tried to emulate, but only the late Australian band Invertigo managed to achieve with any degree of rock credibility.
Some might argue that dressing this material up in a rock band's long hair and shades is a cheat. Me? I don't care. I love this stuff. Erlandsson high toned rasp is just made for cheesy romanticism, and this knows what it is - there's no pretence, no ambition to be anything else but easily accessible.
'
I Know A Lot About Love' is an uncluttered delight. '
Critical' particularly has all the melodic economy and immediacy of good pop music, peppered with brief, radiant bursts of guitar.
Elsewhere, '
Skyscraper's atmospheric coupling of pizicatto strings and dramatic keyboards; '
Supersonic's tuneful sonic wallop, and
Domino's nagging hook are the bait. Listen to one and they'll all reel you in.
Marvellous stuff.
Written by
Brian Tuesday, December 19, 2006
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