Pale As Milk

From the self-deprecating album title (the Swedish singer/songwriter is indeed impressively pigment-challenged) to the casual cover art that looks like it took about 30 seconds to assemble, Karl Larsson's solo debut seems almost premeditated in its casual spontaneity. It's as if Larsson wants to assure fans of his long-running band, the Last Days of April, that Pale as Milk is meant as a lark, a casual one-man-band romp between "proper" albums. However, aside from a slightly more live, rough-and-ready feel in the production and more guitars than keyboards in the arrangements, this album is musically all but identical to recent Last Days of April albums like Ascend to the Stars, down to enlisting the services of producer Pelle Gunnerfeldt for the remix. Think of A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder and its relation to the New Pornographers' albums (identical songwriting style but less elaborate presentation), a comparison that's also apt in terms of the album's overall sound. Larsson is less obsessively clever a songwriter than Newman, but the combination of winsome, boyish vocals and catchy power pop tunes is the same, with the dramatic ballad "Found Half, Lost All" a particular highlight.