On his third solo album, Texas-based singer/songwriter
Faris Nourallah claims to have crafted a narrative song cycle based on a central character, a disillusioned and disenfranchised teenager. The "story" is as hard to suss out as that of such classic supposed concept albums as
Hüsker Dü's
Zen Arcade (or for that matter,
Green Day's
American Idiot), but it's of little importance. This brief but musically rich 13-track album is a varied and delightful journey through a variety of indie folk and arty pop styles. After starting with a batch of songs in the
John Vanderslice or
Elliott Smith tradition of weedy singer/songwriterisms, there's a montage of brief songs in the album's center, fading in and out of each other within a minute or so each, that sounds oddly like the free-form art rock of
Soft Machine's
Volume Two, even down to the fact that when
Nourallah sings in falsetto, he sounds strikingly like
Robert Wyatt. That fades into "Guiding Light," which sounds like a dream collaboration between
the High Llamas and Canadian art pop cult hero
John Southworth, which then transforms into a glorious, dreamy piece of piano-based chamber pop called "I Run Faster Than You Can," which might be the best song
Joe Pernice never wrote. (This song was written and performed with
Salim Nourallah, with whom
Faris made 2001's unfortunately overlooked
Nourallah Brothers.) And on it goes, until the haunting melody and dramatic semi-orchestral arrangement of the closing "Tattoo Your Woman." The storyline, by necessity, takes a back seat to
Nourallah's melodic gifts and smart, largely self-contained arrangements;
King of Sweden is a completely charming record, no matter what it's "about." ~ Stewart Mason