Album: The Cardigans

Long Gone Before Daylight, Stockholm/Polydor

Since the release, five years ago, of The Cardigans' hugely successful Gran Turismo, Scandinavian pop has become more fashionable than at any time since Abba's heyday, with bands such as The Hives and The Soundtrack of Our Lives boosting export figures, and Swedish studios being favoured by everyone from Britney to Posh Spice – not that big a range, I concede, but it does give an indication of the Midas-like power currently exerted by Swedish producers on mainstream pop.

Ironically, The Cardigans' singer, Nina Persson, opted for the opposite route with her solo project, A Camp, drafting in as producer Mark Linkous, prime mover of Sparklehorse. Some of that influence seems to carry over to Long Gone Before Daylight, with songs such as "3.45 No Sleep" and "Please Sister" featuring wheezy pump-organ, and several others using Sparklehorse-like grainy background noise. The effects may be temporary – "Please Sister" soon slips into sleek, slightly austere, string-laced symphonic pop more in keeping with The Cardigans' style – but they affirm that three million sales of Gran Turismo haven't entirely damped down the desire to move on.

As ever, the band's appeal rests on Persson's creamy ingénue vocals and Peter Svensson's knack for devising catchy guitar licks: songs such as "For What It's Worth" and "Live and Learn" demonstrate the pair's keen grasp of the power of hook and catchphrase. The production is state of the art, sometimes excessively so: I have no idea how long they spent buffing and polishing the acoustic guitar lines of "For What It's Worth", but the result is a limpid, mechanistic perfection that sounds totally unnatural. But it's hard to argue with a production this light and atmospheric – a perfectly balanced feather bed that gets bouncy when necessary, but never lumpy.

As on previous Cardigans albums, the songs inhabit a deceptive half-light of sexual desire. "I never really knew how to move you," sings the loner protagonist of "Communication", "so I tried to intrude through the little holes in your veins." A comparable form of abusive co-dependency lurks behind the folk-rock croon of "And Then You Kissed Me", in which Persson's graceful delivery helps lines such as "When love makes you wake up sore/ With fists that are ready for more" slide past.

It's not completely perfect, of course – "A Good Horse" is fairly ordinary anthemic Euro-rock that could be by, well, Europe – but at its best, in the gorgeous blue swoon of "Couldn't Care Less" and the enigmatic twang of "You're the Storm", Long Gone Before Daylight reaches a pitch of melancholy sophistication that few can equal.