Pitchfork
January 20, 2010
Link
4
"Summery," we said? Ha! The cold Swedish winter is right outside! As if to make good on Sincerely Yours' past promise of "no fantasy, no stupid escape," jj's latest leaves behind Balearic beaches for a desert of the real. The Swedish duo's still quasi-anonymous (What? Free health care and no TMZ?!) female singer mentions the change of season in her earnestly intoned lyrics to "Let Go", the first mp3 from the forthcoming follow-up to my favorite album of 2009, but she wouldn't have to. Suspiciously Nebraska-esque harmonica gets her point across immediately. Fragile guitars, icy keys, and Knife-like blots of percussion all second.
jj n° 2 stood on a lofty precipice between naïveté and cyncism, sensitivity and machismo, Saint Etienne and Flo Rida. "Let Go" breaks on through to the other side. A little bit more New Age now: As my colleague Eric Harvey alerted me, the melody to the synth-glistening chorus bears a more than incidental resemblance to Sting's "Fields of Gold", which maybe shouldn't be surprising-- have you ever tried listening to "Fields of Gold" in jj's usual state of mind when it's perpetually dark and freezing outside? "All I have is my soul," the new song begins; a drug reference, a Boss reference, and a reference to label bosses the Tough Alliance later, we're told to free ourselves, let the jealous sun burn our skin anyway. Huh. I was ready for other people to be puzzled by jj. I just wasn't ready for it to happen to me.
