These three chaps from the colder parts of Scandinavia may have once been regarded as little more than leather-thong wearing teen idols, but posterity and reflection now combine to draw us to the conclusion that they were musically way ahead of their time - indeed, perhaps musically somehow beyond time itself. "Scoundrel Days" must be the very apex of some early burst of super-symmetry. Beside the untold potency of the title track, and the strangely disturbing malevolent lyricism of "Cry Wolf", the album contains a scatting of undiscovered joys - "The Soft Rains of April" rhymes "Dover" and "over" without the slightest hint of irony, and the great pivotal final word of the song, uttered in a slightly mannered, unaccompanied style, is oddly monastic in its incantation. "Looking for the whales" needs to be reinvented as "Looking for the Wales"; "Maybe Maybe", containing lyrics such as "Maybe you were joking when you chucked me out the Rover at full speed", is saturated in a narrative force clearly inspired by old Norse mythology. "Manhattan Skyline", with deftly alternating pace in the manner of a malfunctioning petrol-driven lawnmower, completes the selection. The album is a milestone of the mid-eighties, and there's a generation of twenty-somethings out there whose lives will never be the same again as a result.
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