Description

THE BRIDGE is another chewy hour of bubblegummy Europop that hews close to the one with which this brother-and-sister act put Sweden back on the international pop map in 1994. No stylistic breakthroughs, no daring rushes to the edge of pop’s sphere, no deep personal outpourings–just delectable beats and undeniable hooks that apply thinner to Abba’s wall-of-sound disco, and then filter it through the modern dance world of reggae, hip-hop, techno and Madonna.
Besides a couple of forays into Middle Eastern melody and the occasional nod to the Beatles (note the acoustic guitar break in “Lucky Love [Acoustic Version],” the electric version of which shows up only on the European pressing of the album), THE BRIDGE’s main pleasure is its off-kilter lyrical musings. “I’ve got strange ways,” Linn Berggren sings in one song, and then goes on to promise her lover that she’ll leave him, and she’ll return, and she’ll leave him again, while techno keyboard blips descend on a disco beat. In the reggae-ish “Never Gonna Say I’m Sorry,” which brother Jonas “Joker” Berggren wrote, Linn declares, “I’m happy even if you don’t want to invite me out for a dance tonight/I’m not normal, I know it, I don’t care.” It’s also unclear what lines like “lucky love belongs in teenage heaven” are supposed to mean, but Linn and sister Jenny put that one over with a Madonnaesque exuberance that clears it all up: once you’re on the dance floor, nothing else matters.