Sound Bites

Cardigans weave dance and bizarre

Star Trek flavored Yatsura delivers fun, friendly pop

The Cardigans
First Band on the Moon
(Mercury)

Though not, as they claim, the first band on the moon, Sweden's Cardigans do craft a fine brand of space-age pop. The Cardigans are somewhat in the same league as Britain's Too Pure bands (like Pram, Stereolab and Moonshake). But while those bands throw a healthy dose of experimentation into the mix, the Cardigans give themselves over to pure pop abandon.
The dreamy songs on First Band on the Moon are a Euro-pop for the `90s, recalling Abba while still sounding unique and current. The album kicks off with "Your New Cuckoo," a bouncy, danceable number with an uplifting chorus of "La la la la la la."
Singer Nina Persson's saccharine voice is soothing, though it (like all sweet things) can't be taken in large doses. After a while, her breathy innocence starts to wear thin, but until then it's hard to stay away.
The joyously melancholy "Heartbreaker" is a spacey lullaby with great backward sounds and drifty noises. This drowsy pace is continued through a few songs but then picked up with "Never Recover," which features a brilliant melody over a driving beat.
Just in case you take the Cardigans' bubblegum world too seriously, the band throws a cover of Sabbath's "Iron Man" on the album. The Cardigans turn Ozzy's dark anthem into a pretty little ballad that seems more like a fairy tale than a metal song. It's a beautifully perfect moment on a great album, and it elicits laughter from all who hear it (and gags from those who don't get it).
The Cardigans fit in somewhere between the dancey Pizzacato Five and the droney Stereolab, with a perfect blend of the beautiful and the bizarre. First Band on the Moon will bring a smile to the face of all but the most jaded music fans--and some of them will even love it. A-
--Morgan Keep / Music Editor

Yatsura
We Are Yatsura
(Che/Primary Recordings)

Yatsura is a prime example of what happens when we let Trekkies get their hands on guitars. We Are Yatsura consists of 13 tracks that give the impression that the Scottish band writes and composes songs in between trips to Star Trek, gaming and comic conventions. The band even takes its name from a Japanese cartoon series, which comes as no surprise because Japanese animation is the current hot cult item with the sci-fi and comic crowd.
Graham Kemp sings without a hint of a Scottish accent and he is backed with feedback-driven guitars, an electronic toy spaceship, toy rayguns, a beatbox and various dolls. Don't be fooled, however. The fact that Yatsura uses a multitude of toys holds the promise that the band is going to be incredibly quirky, yet Yatsura is just incredibly basic pop with some talking dolls thrown in the mix. Even so, there is plenty of fun to get out of this album.
"Siamese" opens the album and talks about the government cover-up of alien landings, which really seems to piss off Yatsura. The song is fast and plays like a skipping record with harsh vocals that rise and fall. One guitar is played while the another is just sort of scratched--a process Yatsura repeats often throughout the album. An electronic spaceship seems to be heavily involved in a private battle during the song.
Next up is "First Day on a Brand New Planet," which glides along smother than the latest special effects that make the USS Enterprise glide through outer space. The innocent lyrics about hopping in your rocket to fly to a sunny planet are very catchy and hummable--the perfect song to blast on your radio as you speed down the highway in your brand new moon buggy.
There's Kewpies in the attack / they listen when we're at it / it's fine / I don't mind is the sing-along second verse of "Kewpies Like Watermelon." Yes, in this song the Kewpies have taken over the house and they want watermelon. Oh, come on; it's fun.
"Phasers On Stun" is still the most charming song on the album. It's not as rhythmic as the others and the bouncing guitar pattern recalls that of the first song, but lyrics like I was spazzing out with depression / met a girl at the comic convention / couldn't find the strength to leave / said she'd fall in love with me / I bet she's got her phasers on stun are so lighthearted that it doesn't even matter.
Yatsura may not be that innovative, but the songs are clever enough, and in a universe where a majority of rock bands sing about oppression and alienation, it's more than amusing to see a band singing about an actual alien nation. Sure, the novelty of songs about girls who read comics and mean aliens will eventually wear off, but with a new Star Trek film coming out this week, Yatsura is the perfect rock band for some pre-Trek hype. B-
--Todd Martens / Staff Writer