A specific air surrounds every Moonbabies release. It is something engrained in the nothing, something etched in the oxygen. The wait for the first drum to hit is like being on a different bus route for the first time. Life whizzes by but you've taken temporary root and can't lift a concrete foot until that one thing comes to take you away.

      On their third full-length, we find a band who has harnessed a blindingly wide-open sound and wrangled it into focus. The Swedish duo responsible for quietly making some very loud music is back with a new label, a new record, and a full head of steam. After a change to Startracks for their homeland operations, the pieces all fell together and At The Ballroom was born to the world as pearl eyed and wistful as anything they've put out in their 11 year career.

      This is no update of sound to catch up with every electro'd indie-popped blog gem. This is the album that defines and cements a band’s footing in the musical landscape. A claim is staked and a plot of land is reserved for Ola Frick and Carina Johansson as At the Ballroom ticks away track after track. Where 2004’s The Orange Billboard gained the pair some well-named mentions and subsequent stateside spins, At The Ballroom-bulging with ideas and craftiness- pops its buttons and moves a size up with relentless energy and a steady stream of accomplished songcraft.

      The Moonbabies rule over a vast empire of sound is evident from the moment you hit play. Their take on pop is unique, but grounded and worlds apart from the connotations that spring up at the mention of a musical twosome. The pair saw a major jump in productivity and confidence between the aforementioned Billboard and At The Ballroom as Frick explains to One Times One via e-mail, “With The Orange Billboard recording sessions we wrote and recorded around 100 songs, compared to this one where we only wrote and recorded around 14-15 songs, 11 of them turned up on the album. It was much easier for us to reach the goal faster, we're still perfectionists, but this time things fell to the right place easier.”

      Surely this perfection doesn’t come without restraint. As a two-some who play all of their own instruments and only bring in ringers to tour, their sonic pileups never seem forced, in fact, it rarely feels like they’ve had to tinker with their blue prints much at all. As one would guess, this couldn’t be further from the truth and the variations are enough to make even slight fans of this band want to break into their vaults. “Carina on lead vocals, me on lead vocal, Lo-Fi version, Slow version, Heavy version, Dance version…tons of alternate versions, sometimes too good to be unreleased. There are hundreds of versions.”

      With strong hands on the editing suite, The Moonbabies make light work of keeping their nuts and bolts well concealed. Through four strong releases they’ve kept their strand of the pop molecule completely relative to itself, separating cream from crop with rigid discrimination. “We've killed so many songs in the studio which were perfectly good or great songs, but somehow they tend to get less interesting by each listening.” Frick says. “Carina recently said, jokingly, in an interview that if a song can't handle 1000 listens in the studio we throw it in the trashcan.” With this type of self-scrutiny there’s no room left to wonder why you always get the same breathtaking experience song after song.

      The vocals are ever-airy regardless of who is behind the mic and a continually lazy (hammock lazy, never a victim of the couch) haze floats upon them playing perfect peacemaker between their uppity beats and somber reprieves.

      The Moonbabies big step forward is pressed into finality with a lyrical completion that is a welcomed progression for the pair. Melody was something that seemed to be born into this band from the get go, but as far as a wider appeal, a place where their pop can be heard as pop without explanation, it is the disc's crowning achievement. There is a confidence that dominates the vocals here, the pieces fit together so perfectly that they dominate the landscape. By the time Frick says, "The Ballroom is filled with broken glass/A couple of pieces left/ But if you get lost along the way/ I know you just ran out of luck” he’s just painting away at the last few bare pieces of the canvas. “Dancing In The Sky” closes the doors on The Ballroom with a reflective luster that makes starting the whole thing over again seem obvious if not unavoidable.

      Revelations make for great pop songs. Frick’s, "I just found myself in ways I couldn't help," on the lead single, “War On Sound,” is convincing. You understand things about understanding, viewing the process of feeling through eyes almost as familiar as your own. Ironically, that kind of moment making is one part happenstance and possibly one part translation. “It's funny you mention that line,” he says, “Because I'm still not sure what it means. Or actually I think I do know what I mean. The chorus of the song was written instantly. Lyrics, music, and everything and I haven't changed a thing. But I like those kinds of lyrics myself, to me all good pop songs need some kind of mystic.”

      The sweeping standout cut, “Cocobelle” is aged with strings and a great drum pound that meets a blippy keyboard grind and airy vocal to swell up in modern Spectoristic bliss. The short and sweet cut falls in line between an upbeat left-of-center Johannson vocal workout and a somber instrumental bridge revealing a versatility that has been with The Moonbabies from the beginning. Trying to hear this record through virgin ears is a testament to the masterful selection and placement of its tracks. At The Ballroom keeps short attention spans in check with a variety that lets you get comfortable just long enough to make you piece together your thoughts before they evolve again.

      Where The Orange Billboard was a sensational album full of life and luster for those who got their hands on it, At The Ballroom finds accessibility without an ounce of compromise. It's more that The Moonbabies just needed to distill and bottle what had been there from the beginning rather than changing their tune as so many bands do. Their brand of mind blowing-popism hasn't made a huge jump in sound from their first to their newest, but the subtle maturity of song and craft has been on their heels the whole time. With The Moonbabies At The Ballroom, Ola Frick and Carina Johannsen were finally able to get one step ahead of it.

-Joel Armato 05/14/07