R�yksopp, Melody A.M.

The thing about this album is, I�m pretty sure I never danced to it. I got it during the darkening December days of 2002, when all I really did was work all day in the soul-draining flourescene of NCS and then, at night, fight a losing battle against the holiday shopping crowd at the bookstore. (I did this because I am a masochist and because I needed the money to replace my stolen drum kit.) So really, most of my listening experience with this album came from hearing it at seven-thirty in the morning during a frozen drive up Dodge Steet to work, or coasting back up Dubuque Steet from the interstate at midnight, after a very long closing shift at the mall. By that point, I�d been working for sixteen hours straight and the most I had to look forward to was a beer or two with whatever friends I could track down. I say this not to elicict pity; I mention it because I lived for those brief car rides, because that�s when I was usually listening to this little love letter from Norway: it was a sparkling antidote to workaday drudgery, an elegant backdrop to the winter solstice that gave me cause to bounce in my car seat and sing along in defiance of mall traffic and the next shift.

But this album�s tone and that unhappy daily routine are maybe not so incongruous after all: For every song here that sounds like it was created during one of northern Norway�s eternal daylights, there�s another that sounds like the product of a winter nighttime that lasted two months. My favorite moments: The faux-Gregorian chorus of �So Easy�; the segue from that into "Eple"'s magnetic guitar-squiggles and orchestral sweeps; the brief comedown of �Sparks� and �In Space� before �Poor Leno� picks up the tempo with its clanging auxilliary percussion and choppy funk guitar; the wintry coda that complements �A Higher Place��s ethereal vocals and dirty groove; the obvious yet still infectious theme song �R�yksopp�s Night Out�; and the most charming little gem of all, �Remind Me�, which would secure Erlend �ye�s precious place in every art-school girl�s heart if Kings Of Convenience hadn�t already done so. Melody A.M. is an upbeat affair, but it betrays a darker, colder sort of party atmosphere with both its title and tone. This is escapism at its finest, and for that I almost feel I�m better off having heard it set against the oppressive climate of a long Iowa winter.

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