If you happen to bump into Peter Moren, Bjorn Yttling or John Eriksson on your travels treat them with the utmost respect, and perhaps try to wangle an invite back to their Stockholm house. For in the basement of their pop laboratory, we suspect, they’ve finally developed that invention man has striven towards for since HG Wells put pen to paper: the time machine. Evidence? Living Thing, their fifth official album. Where their previous albums were created in a quantum vacuum trapped somewhere between 1966 and 1971 they’ve finally worked out how to manipulate the fabric of time to allow them access to any epoch they want. And dammit, they’re heading for the 80s faster than you can say “Michael J Fox”.
PBJ have talked up their love of the decade that produced both fantastic (Pet Shop Boys) and cheesetastic (Howard Jones) pop in the run-up to this album’s release, going so far as to employ the Miami Vice sountracker Jan Hammer (truly the embodiment of the 80s) to remix lead single Nothing To Worry About. In the process the Swedish trio have finally found a vehicle for their schoolboyish playfulness, creating an album short on guitars, heavy on vocals hooks, and dense with joyful musical tricks. Songs like Lay It Down (which features the album’s catchiest chorus in ‘Hey shut the fuck up boy/You’re starting to piss me of’, and plays out like a sinister Kanye rap track) and It Don’t Move Me (which employs the same minor key minimalism the Kills attempted to emulate on their last album, with stratospheric success) are unapologetic stabs at 7” single perfection. Just The Past channels the ghost of Paul Simon (who’s had a rather busy time of it of late), Stay This Way recalls Toto’s swashy global village ode Africa, and Bernard Sumner seems to have mauled Blue Period Picasso with his Mancunian mitts. Not that the album exists only as a monument for bygone bands – as with Writer’s Block PBJ employ an aesthetic to work under, but mould it to their own wicked pop plans. The result is a collection far more compelling than not just their earlier efforts, but nigh-on anything else that’s graced these ears in a long, long time. Where they’re going, they don’t need roads.
