Revisit of the Week: The Cardigans - Life (1995)
I have an irrational aversion towards The Cardigans' second album, Life. Or the copy I have of it, anyway.
The Cardigans' debut album Emmerdale was released in 1994 by Trampolene Records, a tiny subsidiary of the then-independent Stockholm Records - in Sweden only (and Japan where it randomly took off). The album did decently in Sweden and encouraged the label to give the band a bigger push overseas. The follow-up Life was recorded quickly thereafter and released the following year under the primary Stockholm Records roster. This was The Cardigans' first international release... but the thing is, that debut did have some material essential to the band that really ought to be heard by wider audiences. Thus, two different versions of Life were released. Sweden got Life 'proper', the 11-track successor to the debut which basically just slightly polished the twee pop of the first album; the rest of the world, however, received a 13-song edition which removed three of the new songs and replaced them with five tracks taken straight off the debut.
I had owned Emmerdale for a good few years before I ever bought Life and when I finally did order it online, I was under the impression I'd be ordering that original Swedish version. Nope. I got the international version (which to be fair is more common, but I do feel like this was described incorrectly). I was, quite frankly, a little annoyed. I wanted to hear 11 new (to me) songs, not a smaller handful of new songs mixed in with songs I already loved but which belonged to an entirely different album; though at least the obvious highlight of Emmerdale "Rise and Shine" has been re-recorded, so I guess you could say I got four and a half old songs?. This annoyance eventually grew to a petty resentment, to the point that I've not really listened to Life much at all compared to the other Cardigans albums. I downloaded the original version in the aftermath so I could at least have it that way, but even listening to that has been clouded by my childish, irrationally persistent peeve.
So this past week I've been trying to get over my Grumpy Bear act and here's what I got:
- All the Emmerdale songs are still great so I don't really mind hearing them that much; including the new version of "Rise and Shine" which gets to act a little more like the killer hit it was bound to be in some life (though I do miss the twee softness of the original), and of course that immortal "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" which is not only a trivia point that continues to delight and surprise many, but is a genuinely fantastic genre-transforming take.
- Of the songs that were removed, at least whoever did showed some decent judgment because neither "Pikebubbles" nor "Sunday Circus Song" are in any competition to be among the original album's finest. Ditching the closer "Closing Time" is a little less forgivable; it's more of a conceptual piece than a killer song but robbing an album of its conceptual closer is just not nice.
- ... and if we're honestly being fair, maybe another reason that I haven't really listened to Life much is because it's not that strong of an album. You can absolutely hear it was rushed out quickly, before the band had put together enough songs for a worthy follow-up to the debut (which is great btw and should be heard by anyone who loves ramshackly cute indie pop) and before they had figured out where they wanted to take over the band. This is the awkward middle phase between Emmerdale and the eventual breakthrough album First Band on the Moon (the one with "Lovefool"), and though its semi-ironic 1960s-by-way-of-1990s lounge pop is fun sonically, the songs just aren't particularly memorable...
- ... with the exception of "Carnival", which is one of the band's finest straightforward pop songs and a real smash. No wonder Japan loved these guys from the start, "Carnival" sounds like it launched a hundred shibuya-kei bands all by itself.
So I guess the end result is that this HORRIBLY BUTCHERED international version which VIOLATES the original track flow by a FORCEFUL INVASION of songs from an entirely different album... is actually the better album because it's ditching a couple of the weakest songs in a generally not particularly exciting batch and replaces them with a group of bangers (and sad bangers)? Well, that's awkward.
(I'll get the OG version eventually on my shelf)
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