Those Dancing Days - 'Daydreams And Nightmares' (Wichita) Released: 07/03/11

There must be some undetectable mineral in the water. Maybe musical accomplishment is a natural bi-product of one the world’s most extensive welfare states. Or it could just be the monumental challenge every band faces of having to live up to Abba’s epic legacy. Whatever the case, Sweden has churned out more than its fair share of great acts since this Scandinavian nation first announced its world conquering ambitions to the tune of ‘Waterloo’ and a Eurovision audience of millions in 1974.

Sitting in a modern lineage that includes The Knife, Robyn and The Radio Dept, Those Dancing Days have their work cut out to avoid being forgotten about amidst such a glut of talent. From the shrill discord of ‘Reaching Forward’s sleek synth-driven opening however, it is instantly apparent this all-female four piece have taken a FM radio sized-stride away from the overly twee hue of their debut album ‘In Our Space Hero Suits’.

Not only does Patrick Berger’s (Robyn, Erik Hassle) glistening yet visceral production job retain his subjects’ endearingly ragged charms, the need to punch against such a clean recording aesthetic has evidently reinvigorated this once tame collective with some much needed bite. “You're in my space get out of my face”, spits a resolutely pissed lead singer Linnea Jönsson on the gargantuan kiss-off that is lead single ‘****arias’.

Her sultry vocals provide the focal point for an album that ticks the typical indie-pop boxes of love, lust and desperation but does so with both a verve and an aplomb that rarely stales. The disco-pop shimmer of ‘Dream About Me’ swoons as all good odes to unfulfilled desire should whilst ‘Keep Me In Your Pocket’ wraps handclaps, a toe-tapping bassline and one brilliantly glib, “You’ll never stay, I’ll never go” chorus into a joyously penitent package.

Ironically though, it’s the strength of album closer ‘One Day Forever’ that points to the drawbacks of ‘Daydreams And Nightmares’. Cloaked in a shroud of cascading xylophone and strident guitar, Jönsson and The Maccabees’s Orlando Weeks conduct a duet of unabashed intimacy, which revels in raw heartbreak to an extent that seems shamefully untapped across the rest of the record.

That Those Dancing Days choose to break out of their feisty femme fatale niche so late in the course of ‘Daydreams And Nightmares’ however, is best taken as a sign of how well they’ve carried that ethos for the bulk of their second album.

That they rally against it so successfully bodes fortuitously for its follow-up.