Oh My God

With her solo debut, released about a year after the dissolution of her band Lambretta, Linda Sundblad transformed herself from a hard-edged, metal/goth-styled rock chick into an unrepentantly girly dance-pop diva (although she still seems to prefer black nail polish.) The upshot is an impressively strong collection of danceable, retro-inflected pop that, somewhat unusually for the genre, forms a cohesive whole thematically as well as musically. Oh My God sounds like a bit of a throwaway as an album title, but it works perfectly to reflect the handful of recurring lyrical topics (religion, sexuality, and teenagerhood) and to allude to the '80s influence that pervades the album -- the most obvious touchstones being early Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, both of whom Sundblad bears a substantial resemblance to vocally as well as visually. "We're the babies/Born in the '80s," she sings in "Pretty Rebels" -- Sundblad was born in 1981, which means she was eight when Like a Prayer was released, and 26 at the time of this recording. Even if the generational math doesn't quite add up, there's a compelling sense of nostalgic juvenilia that informs both the music and lyrics, most of which deal with love and relationships. It's standard pop subject matter, of course, but Sundblad approaches it with a uniquely teenaged sensibility, alternating between enthusiasm and desperation, exclaiming "he's the dynamite/even my parents like!" (on "Keeper") or recalling when, as a virginal 16-year-old, she "could never imagine a boy would love me" ("Back in Time."). A further layer of interest, and another parallel with early Madonna, comes with the mildly edgy combination of Christian imagery with frank sexuality. It's evident from the outset, as a moralizing male voice intones a biblical injunction against adultery (Leviticus 20:10) before bursting into the exuberant faux-tropical groove of "Cheat" (complete with synth horn stabs), which finds Sundblad giddily declaring to would-be seducers that "I would never cheat on my baby," perhaps a little too insistently to be entirely believed. The sex/religion motif is most prominent on "Oh Father," which (unlike the Madonna song of the same name) is addressed not to her biological father but her heavenly One (or, more likely, a priest), seeking forgiveness, somewhat melodramatically, for her sins of the flesh: "I've been touching myself and I'm worried/Is heaven still open for me?" As it turns out, there's at least one slice of sheer dance-pop heaven in store for Sundblad, in the form of absolutely stunning, heartbreaking "Lose You," this album's addition to the bliss-pop pantheon that also includes Annie's "Heartbeat," Robyn's "With Every Heartbeat," and Rachel Stevens' "I Will Be There," (the spiritual godmother of them all being Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time.") It's the undeniable high point of Oh My God, but it's also the only song here that seems especially concerned about striving for beauty. The rest of the record is purely about fun, intent on little more than offering up a plethora of danceable beats, appealingly synth-infused arrangements, and a few memorable, if not necessarily durable, chorus hooks, and on that score, it delivers immaculately.