The Cardigans took a pause after their highly acclaimed album Grand Turismo. Thus in 2001 Persson busied herself with recording and releasing her first album with her new project, A Camp. An album of lovely songs, produced by Sparklehorse, it won her four Swedish grammys and showed that she could exist outside of the band with which she made her name.

Three years later they covered R.E.M.'s Losing My Religion for the soundtrack of the Danish film Lad De Sma Born and then, after another two deliciously depressing albums with The Cardigans (Long Gone Before Daylight and Super Extra Gravity), two lengthy tours and her first acting role in Om Gud Will, Persson decided to return to Camping. Colonia is the result of the rapprochement.

So what can be expected from a girl who takes in the glittery ersatz '60s kitsch-pop of Carnival to the crunchy rock'n'roll of I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need To Be Nicer, and who collaborates both with Manic Street Preachers and the blissfully little known Austrian singer / songwriter Florian Horwath too?

Colonia is an album of 12 songs, already an advantage over the lengthy first album. The cover suggests what to expect: Nina's head on some sort of a dressing table, being pawed at by unknown hands, while she is giving us a look that suggests we mind our own business. Tongue-in-cheek and morbid, just as we'd seen in the video for Erase/Rewind or in songs like Don't Blame Your Daughter.

Listening to the album as a whole, it's satisfyingly compact, a neatly produced record with stand-out tracks and growers. It opens with a number to raise eyebrows. The Crowning is led by a nostalgic out-of-tune piano intro before becoming a song that ABBA could have written, had they ever developed a sense for grotesque self irony. It comes with a melody slightly reminiscent to Frank Sinatra's Something Stupid and throws in ninaperssonisms like "Let's raise our glasses / to murderous asses" straight away.

Stronger Than Jesus, the album's lead single, comes as a musical shock after the opening waltz but holds attention with excellent lyrics drenched in irony set to pop-friendly arrangements topped with refreshing brass. The following two tracks come with a pinch of déjà-entendu: Bear On the Beach sounds like a song left off a Sparklehorse record and Love Has Left The Room heads in the direction of Coldplay. But Persson's voice even made a Manics song bearable and saves this song from being let's-just-skip-this-one filler. Fortunately the duet Golden Teeth and Silver Medals, with Swedish singer Nikolai Dunger, returns to the album's original path. Torn between melancholy and irony, this is where the best of A Camp lays.

The second half has good and bad surprises. Here Are Many Wild Animals starts off unexpectedly, sounding like The Lion Sleeps Tonight before flowering into a pop/rock-song. But it's far from the crème of the album. The quiet beauty of Chinatown is followed by the unfortunate My America - the closest we get to filler.

But the musical interlude Eau De Colonia soothes nerves and from this moment on there is not one regretful moment. I Signed The Line Of Separation, the heartbreaking It's Not Easy To Be Human and the closing The Weed Had God Here First are all growers and add something new to the whole.

The Cardigans bassist Magnus Sveningsson once laughed in an interview that listening to Nina's (quite depressing) lyrics causes one to wonder about her marriage. Colonia is not proof of happiness. The darkest corners of the internet harbour suggestions to the effect that Nathan Larsson is something of a Yoko Ono figure for The Cardigans. But musically and lyrically he's been only of benefit to whatever Persson has done. And what she's done with Colonia is open the door on an indulgently dark world.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees