Happy 20th Anniversary to The Cardigans’ fifth studio album Long Gone Before Daylight, originally released in Japan March 19, 2003, in Europe March 24, 2003 and in the US May 25, 2004.
“There was no actual fighting, but there was no talking, either,” Nina Persson explained to the New Zealand Herald in 2003, as she revisited the aftermath of The Cardigans’ tour in support of their 1998 album Gran Turismo. “Nobody could stand the sight of anyone else, yet no one was prepared to have it out. We were just too tired. It was less an all-out battle than a cold war.”
With their fourth studio album, the Swedish pop-rock quintet had successfully reimagined their sound by summoning more abrasive—yet no less melodic—electronic arrangements juxtaposed with noticeably darker lyricism. “I think Gran Turismo is a crucial album since we really changed paths there,” bassist Magnus Sveningsson admitted during a 2019 Albumism interview. “We didn’t want to go on as a ‘retro-sounding’ band, so we threw that part away.”
Moreover, on the strength of Gran Turismo’s magnetic singles “My Favourite Game” and “Erase/Rewind,” the band effectively subverted the myopic one-hit-wonder classification that had been unfairly bestowed upon them since their ubiquitous hit “Lovefool” had first surfaced in the summer of 1996. The undeniably high caliber of The Cardigans’ songcraft was now more broadly acknowledged, firmly elevating them as a musical force not only to be heard, but to be revered.
And while the group’s creative reinvention had paid dividends for them in multiple ways, it had left them depleted and divided. Persson, Sveningsson, guitarist Peter Svensson, drummer Bengt Lagerberg and keyboardist/pianist Lars-Olof Johansson embarked upon a much-needed sabbatical from each other and redirected their energy toward solo creative endeavors, arguably the most notable of which was Persson’s revelatory side project A Camp.
The extended break from each other served the bandmates well, as when they reconvened in the studio to record their fifth studio affair, they returned with their collaborative synergy reignited and their minds open to traversing yet another nuanced path for their music. After initial sessions with their longtime producer Tore Johansson were curtailed, the group turned to his colleague—and founder of the famed, Malmö-headquartered Tambourine Studios—Per Sunding to shepherd the remainder of the album through to fruition.
Relinquishing the electronic bent of its precursor Gran Turismo, Long Gone Before Daylight found the ensemble embracing a more organic, Americana-indebted sound that illuminates the symbiotic strengths of Svensson’s musical compositions and Persson’s evolved lyricism. Indeed, it is the latter element—more than any other—that forms the beating heart of this beautifully resonant record.
Persson’s astute soliloquies on the dynamism of love and loss—and the eloquence and emotion with which she so compellingly conveys them—are often breathtaking to behold throughout the duration of the album’s eleven original songs and three bonus tracks, offering unequivocal evidence of her elevated stature as one of contemporary music’s most adept songwriters. Ostensibly aided by the time she had spent cultivating the songs for the eponymous A Camp debut LP released in 2001, Long Gone Before Daylight represents the culmination of Persson’s dedication to refining her craft, which had become increasingly prominent and powerful with each successive Cardigans album.
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Relative to Gran Turismo, which the album’s producer Johansson described as “a very cold and defined recording,” Long Gone Before Daylight presents a more thoughtfully calibrated mix of moods and tones coupled with a heightened emotional weight, all of which coalesces to form an enveloping listening experience overall. “In a way, it’s more bright than the last record,” Persson reflected during the interview featured with the Up Before Dawn bonus DVD that accompanies the album’s US edition. “But it still certainly has a lot of melancholy and darkness as well. But I think it’s mainly warmer. It’s not positive, but it’s warm. It’s a very understanding album.”
Nowhere is this warmth exuded more profoundly than across the three official singles that were unveiled from the album. Released two weeks before the album made landfall in Europe, standout lead single “For What It’s Worth” is a buoyant number, though Persson’s disposition remains wistfully somber, as she performs that delicate dance between the passive and aggressive when it comes to determining how transparent your affection should be toward another. “Hey please baby come back, she sings in the song’s second verse. “There'll be no more loving attacks / And I'll be keeping it cool tonight / The four-letter word is out of my head / Come on around get back in my bed / Keep making me feel alright.” Manic Street Preachers co-founder Nicky Wire—whom Persson collaborated with four years later on the band’s 2007 single “Your Love Alone Is Not Enough”—once claimed that the song contains “the best lyrics ever,” and I think a compelling case can be made that it certainly belongs in the upper tier of all-time songwriting achievements.
The soaring second single “You’re the Storm” is an impassioned ode to the vitality that keeps relationships strong when partners continually challenge each other, with the self-possessed Persson proclaiming in the song’s chorus, “’Cause you're the storm that I've been needing / And all this peace has been deceiving / I like the sweet life and the silence / But it's the storm that I believe in.”
An introspective nod to acknowledging that life is a never-ending quest for self-awareness, acceptance and understanding, “Live and Learn” surfaced as the third and final single, with Persson confessing, “And goddamn, I don’t seem to have learned / That a lady in need is guilty indeed / So I paid and got laid in return / And I don't know what I've learned.”
As wonderful and soul-affirming as these three official singles are, it’s the more melancholic fare that I typically gravitate toward and most closely associate with the intrinsic identity of Long Gone Before Daylight. The arresting, album-opening torch song “Communication” finds Persson grappling with irresolute feelings about a partner who fails to reciprocate her desire for connection, while the sobering “Couldn’t Care Less” unfolds as a sparse, plaintive examination of emotional dissonance and indifference. Persson’s fragility and defeatism are palpable from the opening verse, as she reveals, “Oh, my heart can't carry much more / It's really really aching and sore / My heart don't care anymore / I really can't bear more / My hands don't work like before / I shiver and I scrape at your door / My heart can't carry much more / But you couldn't care less, could you?”
The dramatic, disquieting arrangement of “Please Sister” offers the perfect accompaniment for Persson’s anguish-laden lament for the inherent struggle of loving someone, as she poignantly contemplates, “So if it's true, that love will never die / Then why do the lovers work so hard / To stay alive.”
“Lead Me Into the Night” is an enchanting song of redemption that fits perfectly within the nocturnal themes that pervade the album, as does the concluding track “03:45: No Sleep,” which features some of Persson’s most striking and evocative songwriting in lines like “I'm waking with the roaches / The world has surrendered / I'm dating ancient ghosts / The ones I made friends with / The comfort of fireflies / Long gone before daylight” and later, “I've always been too lame / To see what's before me / And I know nothing sweeter than / Champagne from last new year's / Sweet music in my ears / And a night full of no fear.”
“It’s a really beautiful lullaby type of song,” Sveningsson has said of “03:45: No Sleep.” “I’ve always thought that Nina sings about sleeplessness as a bad thing, as dark and scary a bit…but she seems to have more comforting feelings about it, like you’re out with a friend talking or drinking wine and you might be actually going away the day after on a month-long tour. So it’s like getting the last hours out of a relationship.”
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Still my favorite song on the album two decades on from first hearing it, the title of “Feathers and Down” alludes to the antidotes we all covet when life gets heavy, as the empathetic Persson vows her compassion and support for someone who may be stretched beyond help, as they lean upon superstition and addiction to weather their storm. “Oh I wish my arms were wider,” she muses. “I wish that I could hide you / So you could rest and repair / Without the blanket of sorrow / The thick and the grey / Your blanket of woe / Is so heavy and stained / And it only weighs you down.”
Additional highlights can be found in the insistent rumination about seeking stability in the form of “A Good Horse” and the unsettling “And Then You Kissed Me,” which could conceivably be interpreted as an examination of physical domestic abuse with references like “Blue, blue, black and blue / Red blood sticks like glue” and “Oh you hit me / Yeah, you hit me really hard / Man, you hit me / Yeah you hit me right in the heart.” More likely, however, Persson’s words are a metaphorical allusion to the emotional pain that the sheer act of loving someone can inflict upon someone who takes it so seriously and finds herself so nakedly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of love.
The slightly nuanced Japanese, UK and US expanded editions all present bonus tracks, with the latter release containing all three of these worthy gems. Originally included on the “You’re the Storm” maxi-single, the all-too-brief “Hold Me” clocks in at a mere 33 seconds, which may lead some listeners to yearn for a more fully developed version of the song (which may or may not exist somewhere?). Housed within the “Live and Learn” single release, the subdued yet stirring “If There Is a Chance” unfolds as a reassuringly optimistic ode to preserving love (“If there is a chance / Just one in this world / That we'll ever dance / Again as it turns / If there is a chance / If there is a way / There's one record left / That you haven't heard / And I'll keep it spinning”). Lastly, “For the Boys” is a propulsive pop-rock standout cut from the same cloth as “For What It’s Worth” and “Live and Learn.” Diligent listeners may also wish to seek out the languid, countrified rarity “The Road,” which is omitted from the album’s expanded incarnations but appears on the “For What It’s Worth” single.
In the two decades that have ensued following Long Gone Before Daylight’s arrival, The Cardigans have delivered just one additional studio album (2005’s excellent Super Extra Gravity). The band members have periodically resumed their respective projects independent of the group, including Persson’s second A Camp album Colonia (2009), her proper solo debut Animal Heart (2014) and most recently, her collaborative LP with Scottish singer-songwriter James Yorkston and fellow Swedes the Second Hand Orchestra entitled The Great White Sea Eagle, which was released to critical acclaim this past January.
Despite the extended absence of new recorded output, The Cardigans have continued to successfully tour from time to time, primarily across Asia, Europe and Mexico, including their performance at Hong Kong’s Clockenflap Festival earlier this month alongside an impressive roster of co-headliners that included Arctic Monkeys, Phoenix and Wu-Tang Clan. Nearly 17 years have passed since the band last visited the U.S. to support Super Extra Gravity in late 2006, so I am eternally grateful that I had the luxury of experiencing their “Daylight Breaks” tour stop at Brooklyn’s now-defunct Southpaw venue back in May 2004, in conjunction with Long Gone Before Daylight’s subsequent stateside release.
“We threw Gran Turismo away when we made our best album, Long Gone Before Daylight,” Sveningsson proclaimed four years ago. “I guess that’s how you build an interesting career? Invent, discard, invent again.” An interesting career, indeed, and Long Gone Before Daylight endures as the pinnacle of the group’s sterling discography to date. An album infused with heart, soul and grace from beginning to end, it’s been one of my most trusted aural companions for two decades now and it will invariably remain an unwavering source of inspiration and solace for the rest of my life.
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