An album with 12 songs, each lasting under four minutes. That’s what a decent Swedish pop album is made of. But even if the music of Kommun is pop, the band doesn’t seem to be that popular yet. 100 friends on Myspace and 73 fans in Facebook reveal that we aren’t talking about stadium sized band here. The members of Kommun seem to be better known from their other projects Siberia, Hospitalet and Vapnet, still after giving out their debut album in the end of the last year in Sweden.There’s nothing wrong with the music of Kommun, but right now it just feels like the Swedish indie market is almost over crowded with bands who play happy pop with naive lyrics about love & and life. Or maybe it’s just me, being a Finnish person with huge envy to the Swedes who seem to be able to make songs out of nothing and make gold out of everything they touch.Fooling around with the lyrics is the path band has chosen and Kommun tries hard to use the same ironic, black humour as their fellow citizen Jens Lekman does. But the expressions are stumbling, mostly because being a bit lost in translation.Kommun have fantastic moments and at their best, their catchy melodies remind me of Teenage Fanclub. The highlights of the album turn out to be the first single 'Death Of An C.E.O' and 'Let Me Go', both backed up by female vocalists. After listening to the record multiple times, I can’t help giving up on my envy and thinking how the band would sound like if they were using their native language.

Buy/preview the album from Klicktrack