Following electronic duo
Air France and twee traditionalists
the Honeydrips,
Jonas Game was the third new artist to emerge on Sincerely Yours, the Gothenburg, Sweden-based label run by iconoclastic art-pop jokesters
the Tough Alliance, with his debut single "New City Love" appearing in June 2007 and the full-length
ADHD following that October. While he shares an endearing lighthearted streak and a finely honed pop sensibility with his labelmates, as well as a certain taste for appropriation (or perhaps "détournement," as their Situationist rhetoric would have it) -- "New City Love" borrowed its chorus lyrics from
Nirvana's "Come as You Are" --
Game stands out as the most musically straightforward act on the Sincerely Yours roster. Lundquist was formerly the drummer of the popular straight-ahead rock outfit
Bad Cash Quartet, who scored two Top Ten albums in the early 2000s, and his solo work continues in a similar vein, hearkening back to both classic British punk -- most notably
the Clash -- and big-hearted American roots rockers like
Tom Petty and
Bruce Springsteen, which makes him something like a Swedish version of
Ted Leo. In his visual presentation,
Game echoes
the Tough Alliance's faux-hooligan antics, appearing shirtless in the "New City Love" video and on the 7" sleeve, wearing a baseball cap and crouched in a manner that calls to mind a possible source for his new stage name; rapper the Game (if that connection is intentional, it wouldn't be the label's first reference to American hip-hop --
the Tough Alliance covered a
50 Cent song on one of their early EPs.) But on record, at least, he can't help but come across as a down-to-earth, ordinary guy, a refreshing antidote to the over-the-top hard rock posturing and insufferable cutesiness that dominates much of the Swedish indie scene. ~ K. Ross Hoffman