The Confusions

THE CONFUSIONS
The Story Behind the Story
Massproduktion/Bonnier
Grade: 8/10
In the song "Remain", perhaps the most beautiful track on this album, the core sentence is "They say we're growing older now but I know, our dreams remain the same". It's a nice way of putting how love, or the entire life, could seem when you're no longer a kid. Maybe it's also a call for a raison d'être for the Sundsvall band The Confusions after their 15 years as a band.
The melody is a loop; hypnothically marching, so passionately restrained that you cannot be sure whether it moves backwards or forwards. Musically and singing wise the song seems to be a thoughtful masterpiece that Human League cut out from "Dare!" 1981, only not to confuse their fans.
There are sixteen other tracks on "The Story Behind the Story". On a any given album seventeen songs would be at least five songs too many, but this is not a regular album. If all albums were this thoroughly done, there would never have been a music business crisis. I naively claim this, fully aware of the fact that most bestselling albums include only one or two really good tracks.
Smashing bestsellers constitute the vital putty that creates our common references, but they are not guilty of the music business crisis - the lowest level of quality in the business are. And in this case the lowest level of quality is high because The Confusions are as far as they can get from spontaneous pranks on their seventh full-length album. They put together a melody that really works. From there they carefully add poetry and sound for eternity. Thanks to this, their six year old track "Pilot" recently got playlisted again on American radio. Thanks to this, their tunes carelessly dance out from a kaleidoscope, created of the most fascination components of pop music. At every listening new sensations arouse.

You'd might call it confusing. But if you want to hear how you in best possible way can combine the particularities of Kraftwerk, Niel Young and Joy Division, draped in an atmosphere that links a dry, Northern English year 1983 with a flourishing 1967 Californian sound, then this is the record for you.

MARTIN THEANDER
2008-03-11
- MARTIN THEANDER/

Trampoline - The Confusions (Massproduktion) Album. 4 out of 5
Add these guys to the list of superb Swedish bands. They Borrow from the past (60s britpop, Bowie) without the self consciousness of their Anglo Saxon peers. - Rachel Gordon and Lisa Moore

Scandalously overlooked in the scramble for super-Scandos, this wondrous debut manages to combine the melodious psych-pop of The Beatles' Revolver with a refreshingly lo-fi jazz weirdness... Cornflake King is the catchiest song you'll hear in 1997. - Record Collector UK on Everyone's Invited

Six-O-Seven (1998)
Reuniting with producer peter Svensson, the Confusions deliver their strongest record yet — with Six-O-Seven, frontman Mikael Andersson-Knut truly hits his stride as a songwriter, eliminating the more kitschy elements of his previous work to achieve a new consistency and depth. The thoughtful, assured sound of standouts "Time," "Blue" and "Underground" suggest the back-to-basics methodology of british bands like Ocean Colour Scene and Embrace, with a comparable sense of texture and nuance; what the Confusions do isn't terribly original, perhaps, but the conviction that drives Six-O-Seven is too rare for their music to pass unnoticed. Jason Ankeny www.allmusic.com - Jason Ankeny www.allmusic.com