The Sounds – Dying to Say This to You

By any statistical measure, I should love this album. It’s indie Swedish pop-rock. (Fantastic!) It’s dripping with 80s-style synthesizers. (Fabulous!) But somehow, it didn’t come together for me.

Some of my misgivings are probably due to singer Maja Ivarsson's punky delivery. She sneers her way through lyrics and melodies that most other singers would have prettified. While that approach initially makes the songs sound sassy, repeat listens render it obnoxious.

A larger problem, however, is the songwriting. All the songs have memorable, poppy choruses, but most of them lack matching verses. “Tony the Beat,” for example, shifts through 3 lackluster sections before finding the song’s creamy pop center.

Regardless of the album’s failings, there’s still a lot to appreciate here. “Hurt You” sounds like a relic from 1982 (in the best way possible). You might know it from the Geico commercial where the cavemen are wearing colorful leather motorcycle suits. The more up-tempo version of “Night After Night” is included as a bonus track, and I prefer it to the ballad version. In either version, it’s the prettiest melody on the album.