The Cardigans: Winter warmer

The Cardigans are back with a new album - three years after the internal cold war that threatened their career. Fiona Sturges hears how the band learnt to like one another again

Three years ago, The Cardigans were coming apart at the seams. The Swedish five-piece had come to the end of a gruelling tour in support of Gran Turismo, the album that sent them into the commercial stratosphere, and they were not speaking to one another. "There was no actual fighting, but there was no talking, either," recalls Nina Persson, the blonde-bombshell-turned-raven-haired singer. "Nobody could stand the sight of anyone else, yet no one was prepared to have it out. We were just too tired. It was less an all-out battle than a cold war."

Magnus Sveningsson, the band's unfeasiby tall bass-player, had returned home months before because of exhaustion; he was later diagnosed as having suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1999, after a year away, the remaining members, plus Sveningsson's temporary replacement, Lars Ljungberg, returned home and went their separate ways – Persson to New York, the others split between Malmo and Stockholm. It seemed as though the band had reached the end of the road.

Now, as they sit over a lunch of coffee and sandwiches in a London hotel, they wonder how they ever reached such chilly levels of non-communication. They're here to talk about the band's soon-to-be-ubiquitous fifth album, Long Gone Before Daylight, though the conversation keeps returning to the post-Gran Turismo years, a period that has since been dubbed the Big Freeze.

Along with Persson, Sveningsson is the most talkative of the group. The guitarist Peter Svensson, who looks like a cross between a young Jerry Garcia and a woolly mammoth, drifts in and out of the discussion, while the drummer, Bengt Lagerberg, and Lasse Johansson, the guitarist/keyboard-player, say practically nothing.

For two years, each of them pursued their own projects. Persson formed the band A Camp and released a critically acclaimed self-titled album with the help of Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse; Svensson wrote and produced some tracks for the Swedish soul singer Titiyo Cherry, daughter of Don; and Sveningsson made a solo album, I Sing Because of You, under the moniker Righteous Boy. Perhaps the most radical endeavour of all came from Lagerberg, who dispensed with drumming completely and went back to college.

"I studied astronomy and astrophysics for a year," he says, stirring from his apparent slumber. "I thought that it would be fun, but it wasn't. It was too theoretical. We didn't get to look at the stars as much as I hoped." It wasn't until 2001 that Lagerberg and Johansson contacted the rest of the band and suggested they get together. By then, says Lagerberg, it was simply a question of deciding whether the split should be permanent. After a couple of initial meetings, the five of them decided to go on holiday instead. They rented a house in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, and spent a week "messing about on the beach, having barbecues and drinking like only Swedes can drink."

"It was very important for us to do something together that didn't involve music," Svensson explains. "We used to be really good friends, and it wasn't all that difficult to discover that we still were. Spending that time together restored our relationships."

"We started really young and have done this for a big part of our lives," adds Persson. "Having a break from the band gave us a chance to check out what other options we had. We weren't angry with each other but it was important for everyone to do their own thing. It's a bit like teenagers leaving the parental home – they have to overstate their independence from the family home before they can get on with their lives."

When you look at them now, it's hard to remember The Cardigans as they used to be – fresh-faced teenagers with an unhealthy regard for the fey fringes of British indie-pop (so Anglophile were the band that they named their debut album after the agrarian soap Emmerdale). Over the course of their career, they've undergone a subtle transformation from cuddly indie popsters to hard-edged rockers.

"I think an element of reinvention is necessary for a band," says Persson, "Not just to keep the fans guessing but to prevent us from getting stuck in a rut." The news that Persson has dyed her hair black and got married may come as a blow to the band's male constituency – when The Cardigans first appeared on the scene, in 1994, the singer set the hearts and loins of myriad music-lovers alight with her candy-coated vocals, blue eyes and white-blond hair.

"As the singer, you're always going to get more attention," she says modestly. "I used to really hate it. It seemed strange to me that Peter did all the work with the music and Magnus wrote the lyrics yet people were always interested in what I was doing. Now I write the lyrics, I feel like I've finally filled that role."

The Cardigans' first big hit was 1997's multimillion-selling "Lovefool", the success of which is still a source of bafflement to the band. The song, which appeared on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, became a romantic anthem despite the apparent neurosis in the lyrics: "I don't care if you really care/ As long as you don't go." Though the band have long been partial to the odd Black Sabbath cover, it was Gran Turismo, an album of propulsive electro-rock, that sealed their status as leather-clad rockers.

With their new LP, The Cardigans have done another stylistic about-turn. Long Gone Before Daylight is a considerably quieter, more downbeat affair than Gran Turismo – musically, it has more in common with Persson's solo project, A Camp. It's a work that brims with beautifully observed and bittersweet sentiments about love and relationships.

"And Then You Kissed Me" deliberates over the perilous game-playing in new relationships, while the forthcoming single, "For What It's Worth", depicts Persson battling with her desire to tell her new beau how she feels. At first, says Sveningsson, their record company weren't exactly abundant with enthusiasm. "I can't say we were surprised. When we presented First Band on the Moon to the Swedish record company, the first thing they said was, 'There's nothing like "Lovefool" on it.' Now, with this record, they said, 'There's nothing like "Erase/Rewind" [from Gran Turismo] on it.' Such is the imagination of record companies. What can you do?"

"We never made a conscious decision to make a quieter album," says Svensson. "But we had no preconceptions about how it would sound this time around and allowed every song to evolve naturally. It just ended up being more mellow." Given Persson's recent marriage, I wonder how much her lyrics are based on her own experiences.

"Obviously, getting married has been a bit of a trauma" she giggles. "No, seriously, I like my husband very much. I guess I just think that relationships, whether they're sexual or not, are endlessly interesting. They're a source of agony to all people. Obviously, I'm not the first person to write songs about love, and I won't be the last. All you can hope as a songwriter is that your lyrics will move people. If I can achieve that, then all the other problems that come with being in a band just melt away."

The single 'For What It's Worth' is out on Monday. 'Long Gone Before Daylight' is released on Polydor 24 March