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Dec 23, 2015 Web Exclusive By Matt Conner

Swedish indie pop pioneers Club 8 celebrated 20 years as a musical couple (which included several years as an actual couple) in 2015. That experience and chemistry are easy to track on the veteran band’s release of Pleasure, a new eight-song LP that Johan Angergård called the band’s “most focused work to date.”

Pleasure is sexy and cool, layered and restrained. Angergård’s already explored all possible bells and whistles on the band’s vast catalog (which includes releases on 40 different labels in 20 different countries), and he employs them only when needed, keeping the spotlight, as he should, on the evocative vocal of Karolina Komstedt.

“Love Dies” opens the album with the aforementioned restraint, with Komstedt singing from within an icy castle of Angergård’s making. Closing track “Promises We Never Meant to Keep” returns her there with learned lessons of love, perhaps an intimate admission between the pair caught on tape. In between, Angergård ramps up the energy (you’ll picture a Tron light-cycle race on “Late Nights 1”) and emotion (the Sade-like sensuality of “Kinky Love”).

Pleasure, as they say, is fleeting. At only eight songs, we’re inclined to agree. (www.club-8.org)

Author rating: 7.5/10