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Album Review

This follow-up to Hellström's highly successful debut album Känn Ingen Sorg för Mig Göteborg follows largely in the same vein as its predecessor; it's euphoric pop driven by dual electric guitars, lively backing vocals, and trumpet hooks. Some touches immediately serve to differentiate the two, though. The first and most noticeable is Hellström's strange decision to include a samba orchestra on no less than four of the album's ten songs. His incorporations of the genre mostly sound forced and somewhat out of place in this context. Another new feature is represented by the melodica-driven, reverb-drenched elegy "Rockenroll, Blåa Ögon-Igen," a ballad he allows to stay a ballad without culminating in a manic crescendo.

By the time of his second album, Hellström was already notorious for his rather liberal approach to "borrowing" elements from other artists. And the tradition continues here. In fact, this album's lead-off single and biggest hit — "Kom Igen Lena!" — initially had to be withdrawn because of its B-side's melodic similarity to Lloyd Webber's "Pie Jesu." The Motown beat-driven A-side itself borrows generously, if more subtly, from two classic pop hits: the Jam's "A Town Called Malice" and Dexy's Midnight Runners' "Come on Eileen."

More striking still is Hellström's kleptomaniac approach to writing lyrics. The stunning "Minnen av Aprilhimlen" is a good example; its title a nod to the Jesus and Mary Chain; the opening line of the song borrows the opening of the Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby"; the second line is derived from the Stone Roses' "Sally Cinnamon," and for the chorus, he translates Divine Comedy's "Frog Princess." The song's outro then proceeds to culminate with guitarist Timo Räisänen playing a theme from Johann Sebastian Bach's jubilant "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," suddenly making the song a very unlikely high point of latter-day Baroque pop. These, of course, are but a few examples.

On paper this all might seem like a shallow, derivative way of creating pop music. It isn't. And the key reasons are the masterful and respectful way in which Hellström manages to combine all the elements and, of equal importance, his intensely passionate vocal delivery, with every word uttered as if his life depended upon it. This marriage of classicist craftsmanship drawing heavily on the work of others, and a romantic earnestness that's all his own, lie at the core of Hellström's undeniable pop greatness. For these reasons one is able to forgive him for the problematic act of actually stealing Mercury Rev's "Opus 40" note for note on the touching '60s-tinged title track with which the album ends. A worthy conclusion to a very good pop album whose best moments are remarkable, though hindered from consistent greatness by a couple of nondescript songs and odd arrangements.