Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 19/01/09
Label: Reveal Records

With The Cardigans on a seemingly permanent hiatus, the pressure, such as it is, of fulfilling the demand for sweetly dysfunctional Swedish pop falls to A Camp, Nina Persson's side-project. On the plus side, there's no one more capable of being both sweet and dysfunctional and the first single from A Camp's second album achieves that perfect mix of folky, quirky, tenderly beautiful and unnerving without even trying. On the downside, "Stronger Than Jesus" is still small and personal and very much a side project.

So if not exactly a replacement for The Cardigans, its quiet sway and stoic, if unconventional, belief in the power of love - "don't you know love can do you like a shotgun" - is welcome nonetheless and predictably affecting. Creeping into your heart with all the determination and intent of a stalker, it takes all that is good, inspiring and addictive about love, and adding an intensity that definitely isn't healthy, finds obsession where the romance should be. Once again Persson is the enigmatic bunny-boiler and resistance is futile.

    by Dan Gennoe