About a week ago was the release date for ceo’s White Magic, one of my most anticipated LPs of the year, and I just got around to listening to it for the first time during my recent vacation. If you don’t want to read my lengthy, unabashedly glowing review, then let me put my opinion in a nutshell: YOU GOT TO BUY THIS ALBUM.
I’ll leave a “proper” review of the album to the professionals, and instead use my time to highlight the three things that blew me away the most with Eric Berglund’s solo debut:
- The strings: I guess it’s always been present in most of the Tough Alliance stuff (see: closing of “Something Special”, background in “New Romance”) , but the orchestral component on White Magic is certainly more ear-grabbing. The LP opens with “All Around”, a three-minute track of repeated cello-championed melodies and violin lines, and closes with “Den Blomstertid Nu Kommer”, a modern take on what sounds like a religious hymnal featuring a string quartet and a church organ — with much of everything in between including some sort of symphonic component. Surprisingly, Berglund’s blending of high-brow instrumentation with Balearic melodies and beats work out extraordinarily well. The best example of this coexistence is “Illuminata” where the driving force of the song, the oddball percussion-heavy beat, receives support during the interludes from a group of sprightly strings, creating a cheerful dance track.
- The structure: One of the most common comments I made when listening to the album was the quality of the bridges. Any dude with Ableton Live on his laptop can create a hook or a verse, however, it takes an expert to properly connect the elements into a workable song. Track after track on White Magic showcases Berglund’s talent in this regard: the electric guitar rip on “Love and Do What You Will”, the fluttering electro-elements and spliced up samples on “Come With Me”, the river sounds swelling on “White Magic”, and on and on and on… Equal to his ability of creating these dynamic bridges is Berglund’s savvy constructions of song endings. Obviously fading the melody slowly into the blackness of in-between-track space is nothing new, but ceo songs typically introduce interesting new phrases before closing out a track. The opener “All Around” has your typical violin decresendo at the thirty-seconds-left mark, however, the song doesn’t end as simply as you’d expect. Instead, Berglund opts for starting earthly groans just as the strings finish, using these sounds to connect with the following track “Illuminata”. For ceo, endings are more important than just wrap-ups.
- The singing: Maybe it’s just me, but there is something endearing about Berglund’s accented English and slightly strained vocals. Obviously, the lyrics are catchy, interesting, and oftentimes ironic when coupled with song’s melody, however I think it’s Berglund’s “Average Joe” appeal that makes his music so sing-song-y. I find myself belting out the chorus of “come with me / COME WITH ME” primarily because I feel like I can sing it, and not only that, but sing it well (a notion that could easily be disproven in a nanosecond with the use of a recording device).
So yeah, White Magic is Swedish dance-pop at its best and one of the best albums of 2010. You can listen to title track, and arguably my favorite song from the record, below and cop the album from either the Sincerely Yours shop or from Modular Records.
