Track Listing

1. Losing A Friend
2. Godspell
3. Drip Drop Teardrop
4. Overload
5. I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer
6. Don't Blame Your Daughter (Diamonds)
7. Little Black Cloud
8. In The Round
9. Holy Love
10. Good Morning Joan
11. And Then You Kissed Me II
12. Bonus Tracks
13. Give Me Your Eyes
14. Slow

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23842 in Music
• Released on: 2005-10-17
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Extra tracks
• Dimensions: .24 pounds
• Running time: 48 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Scorn, revenge, agnosticism and kinky sex; all this deviance may come as a surprise to the multitudes who bought into the fluffy easy-listening effervescence of The Cardigans' earlier material. Super Extra Gravity will, however, be less of a culture shock to long-term subscribers; The Cardigans - fans of black Sabbath, apparently, while other historical clues have pointed towards a fondness for The Stranglers - always had their darker side, the band's sound taking a turn down a more shadowy alleyway as long ago as the Gran Turismo album.

On Super Extra Gravity Sweden's finest set out to make something "twisted and spectacular". They achieve this - the bible-trashing "Godspell" sounds like Sheryl Crow riding the fairground ghost train while "Losing A Friend" takes the tenderness of the third Velvet Underground album and adds clumping drums and a torturous electric-shock guitar solo worthy of Jonny Greenwood - without losing sight of a winning pop melody. And what of the extraordinary "I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer"? Has it anything to do with dog-training, booze and master / servant sexuality ? Eye-brow raising curiosities abound but Super Extra Gravity is a winning combination of the strange and beautiful. --Kevin Maidment

From the Label
One of Sweden's most successful pop exports since Abba, The Cardigans return with the excellent new album Super Extra Gravity. Produced by Tore Johansson who worked with Franz Ferdinand & previously with The Cardigans on Gran Turismo. Aside from the single "I Need Some Fine Wine...", other highlights include the sparse album opener "Losing A Friend", "In The Round", "Good Morning Joan" featuring a wall of guitars and the sad and beautiful "Don't Blame Your Daughter (Diamonds)". Every listen of the new record reveals another gem - The Cardigans have succeeded in their aim: to make a beautifully deranged album that never ceases to surprise the listener.

CD Description
'Super Extra Gravity' is The Cardigans follow-up album to 2003's 'Long Gone Before Daylight'. Once again, the band havechanged direction and have ditched some of their more lightweight pop moments in favour of a more direct, slightly rockier sound without forgoing their knack for writing great popsongs. Includes the single 'I Need Some Fine Wine And You You Need To Be Nicer'.

Customer Reviews

A great follow up to Long Gone Before Daylight
This album goes well with Long Gone Before Daylight I think. In some ways the style is similar but it is also a progression. Contrary to the other review, I like all the songs, although 'Little Black Cloud' is probably my least favourite. The instant stand out tracks are 'Losing a friend', ''Godspell', 'Fine Wine', 'Don't Blame Your Daughter', 'In the round', 'Holy Love', 'Good Morning Joan', 'And then you kissed me II', and both the bonus tracks. There are no bad songs on the album, and the ones I have not listed above will probably grow on me more and more over time, as with many of the Cardigans songs. 'Slow' is brilliant in my opinion, very atmospheric, and very good lyrics on this and all the album.

Just Keeps Getting Better
As a fan of their early albums Life and First Band on the Moon this was a bit of a shock. It's loud, the guitars and vocals are distorted while the drums are dry as hell and the melodies are not that great. I hated it on first play but I stuck with it. Now I think it's one of their best. The songs really start to get into your brain after about 5 listens and the album gets better with every listen after that (unlike the earlier albums which get worse with repeated listening).

A quick run through of the tracks. Losing a Friend - a great opener, sparse but builds magnificently. Godspell - probably the worst track on the album, sounds like its from an earlier one. Drip Drop Teardrop - probably the one that is most memorable on first listen. Overload - the cutest track on the album in 3/4 and not distorted. I Need Some Fine Wine etc - the single which was criminally underplayed on the radio. Don't Blame Your Daughter - awesome. Little Black Cloud - one of the weaker tracks but great lyrics. In the Round - excellent bass line. Could have been a single. Holy Love - epic. Good Morning Joan - another one of the weaker tracks but still a fine tune. And Then You Kissed Me II - what a fantastic end to the album. Nina sings it like she is in emotional agony.

Nina's usually sugary voice can grate on other albums but due to different processing it stays great til the end on this one and she shows that she really is a fine singer. (Why isn't she ever in the top 100 babes by the way?).

So if you like the Cardigans buy it. Be surprised initially but ultimately delighted by your purchase.

It needn't be nicer
This fell through my letterbox this morning and I have to say, I am not disappointed. While the album definitely has a theme going unlike some of the last albums, which were a little disjointed at times, there's a good feeling to this album, even if some of the lyrics can be a little bit eerie in places. Dog-training? Diamonds and a rubber knife? Someone's spent too much time trying to be a little weird. But the song writing team of Persson and Larsson are especially strong in this album, especially in tracks such as "Little black Cloud" and "Godspell".
And run down of the tracks with ratings follow here, so brace yourself.

Track 1: "Losing a Friend", it's a very nice opener, and is a little slower than most of the rest on the album, but it's also a lot more special and ambient, and with lyrics such as "It's the ribbons I tied / I'd rather just die", the song gets its message of bitterness across well. 7/10

Track 2: The fantastically blasphemous "Godspell" refers to religion as "a great big swindle", and while it's clear they set out to shock with tracks such as this, it doesn't matter at all, because it's a solid tune, and is one of the best on the album. 9/10

Tracks 3 and 4: "Drip Drop Teardrop" and "Overload" are two of the less effectual songs on the album, and they don't have the appeal of the rest of the album. However, if I were to compare them to songs from previous albums, I'd have to say they have the appeal of "Explode" from the Gran Turismo album - decent lyrics and essentially growers. 6/10, 6/10

Track 5: The single released from this album, and though it didn't chart, it's one of the highlights of the album. In "I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to be Nicer" there are a lot of references, and this song showcases some of Persson and Larsson's best work. Talk of "killing the bottle" and "you're handsome in the fog" tells you just what this song is about - a relationship which has been going south for a short time. 10/10 for this track. It's wonderful.

Track 6: "Diamonds" is a great song with one little problem - some of the lyrics are bordering on the obscene. Tune wise, this is one of the best tracks on the album, but a real lack of intelligible lyrics does this song no favours what so ever. Nice family reference as the subtitle "Don't Blame Your Daughter" is well used as a recurring lyric. 7/10

Track 7: A well polished piece of downbeat rock-pop, "Little Black Cloud" shows just what you can do with a bunch of exclamations dotted throughout. "Oh yeah!" just happens to come up a lot, but it doesn't detract from the song, and the brilliant percussion in the chorus gives the song an edge on this album. A big, whopping 9/10.

Tracks 8 and 9: Two more slow numbers placed quite close together. While "In the Round" is a far softer track that is quite upbeat in the context of this album. A simple track about feeling lonely is followed up by the equally risqué "Holy Love", where Nina compares her love to that of an angel, and speaks of "throwing rocks through the windows of a monastery" - this is also where the title of the album, "Super Extra Gravity", is to be found.0 This much heavier track is the better of the two, though, earning a 6/10, while "In the Round" only gets 4/10 from me.

Track 10: "Good Morning Joan" is the fastest, most pop-oriented song on the album, which couldn't come at a better time. After the depression and upset of "Holy Love". A good use of name-dropping, but the upbeat tune hides some seriously sinister lyrics. Joan is in fact lonely, unhappy, lost, and confused. It's a great, standout track, worthy of a 9/10.

Track 11: "And Then You Kissed Me II" is an ultra slow ballad which is a good way to finish the album. It gets rockier half way through the middle with some disturbing lyrics to top off the whole album. This song, particularly, is a call back to "Gran Turismo", their least widely accepted album. But it's still great. 7/10

Track 12: Bonus tracks! A 20 second stint of choral loveliness.

Track 13: The first bonus track on the album is "Give Me Your Eyes", which is easily the best of the two bonus tracks. Rocking, fast, good intelligent lyrics, this song has it all and really is the only one to compete with "I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to be Nicer" - 10/10, but only just.

Track 14: "Slow", well, the name says it all. A country ballad with a perpetual bass line doesn't do it for me sadly, but there are some nice little lyrics here - not my thing, but then, it's not representative of this album at all. Again, only 4/10. Sorry.

A good piece of Swedish rock-pop in which the lead singer, Nina Persson, had a hand in every song. This makes the album all the better as we can really see where the talent lies. A great album deserving of the 87% it has been given in this review. I'm waiting for the next "The Cardigans" album to come out now, because if it is anything like this one, I'll love it.