The Sounds have failed to do it again. Coming on the heels of the commercial success of their first album Living in America, the Swedish band's newest album manages to be the most commercially friendly record put out so far in 2006 that doesn't feature a cash register as one of the principal instruments.
Dying to Say This to You is an album that takes only the smallest creative risks with lyrics that sound like they were written by a middle school student from Västeras. The immaturity of this album is best depicted in the song Tony the Beat,\ which has lyrics that sound like the scene in ""The 40 Year Old Virgin"" where Steve Carell is explaining to his co-workers how he talks dirty.
Unfortunately, the comic quality of ""Tony the Beat"" is nowhere to be found in the album's other songs. Most of them, like ""Song With a Mission"" or ""Running Out of Turbo,"" sound like the band put a Keith Richards riff through a heavy rinse cycle, hired a 22-year-old accountant with a ""creative streak"" to write lyrics, and turned the spunk level of lead singer Maja Ivarsson's vocals up to 11.
The Sounds also seem to be pushing the sex card a little too hard this time around. It's not only that the supposedly sexy lyrics like in ""Tony the Beat"" come out sounding like baby talk, it is also that the cover of the album has a big nipple on it, making this record cover worthy of attracting the trenchcoat crowd into local record stores.
Essentially the failure of Dying to Say This to You is that it fails to adequately emulate modern rock formulas pioneered by English and American bands. The mass media in Sweden is saturated with U.S. film and music, but everything that a Swede sees from America is viewed through a filter. They all know ""A Night at the Roxbury"" and ""Blues Brothers,"" but they've never seen or heard of ""Saturday Night Live.""
In Dying to Say This to You, the filter is audible in every second of the album. The Sounds have probably listened to the Rolling Stones, The Kingsmen and The Cars, but it is doubtful they have ever heard of Robert Johnson, Alan Lomax or Fats Domino.
The Sounds have cut themselves off from the source, and coupled with their inadequate grasp of the English language, have turned out a record that is superficially entertaining with an aftertaste that is trite, secondhand and hollow. But then again, the success of Living in America was not due to the pseudo-rebellion of the title track or the integrity of their message, so why fix something that isn't broken?
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