Peter, Bjorn and John @ The Corner Hotel

I’m a sucker for Swedish pop music. It makes me think of day-glo 1970s Eurovision, those shaggy haired mod-like scenesters in London and The Cardigans’ glittering tunes (just don’t mention The International Noise Conspiracy). It’s fun, and Peter, Bjorn and John fit right into this spirit. The lads from Stockholm took to the stage at the Corner Hotel following a light show worthy of Pink Floyd – which lasted probably longer than was necessary. This provided a suitably overblown fanfare for our Swedish showmen.

As a live act, Peter Bjorn and John sound surprisingly polished for a band whose studio production is so self-consciously detached and lo-fi. It’s no bad thing. On record his voice gets the Sonic Youth treatment (again, no bad thing) and sounds distant and distorted, but live, frontman Peter Moren has a fine, high-pitched voice which also does blood curdling rock opera. Tracks like Let’s Call It Off have the kind of late 70s production values that made The Cars and The Raspberries sound so good. Lots of fuzz bass, sharp but stable drums, some scorching guitar licks. Did somebody say Yacht Rock? Not me, I hate that term. But you can see just where certain European bands, like Phoenix and these guys, get their sound.

Moren is your classic cheeky operator, bantering in charming broken English with his off-sider Bjorn Yttling about suntans and loving animals (“I ate some very tasty kangaroo today”) and referring to some radio station called ‘Triple yay’ to guffaws from the audience. Along with the Swedish novelty humour, it’s the versatility in their music that really makes Peter Bjorn and John a good gig. The lovely, simple, Bjorn-led Amsterdam had the crowd singing along, football-mob style, whereas the big finale, Up Against the Wall, was chock full of face-melting guitar solos, star-jumping and amp-n-mic wrecking antics.

Moren, the focal point of the show, even managed to survive a couple of awkward moments throughout the night. At various points he fluffed the words to his own songs; forgot the name of their support band when The Crayon Fields’ lead singer Jeff got up to help on the bongos for Young Folk (oops); lost the whistling riff of their aforementioned big hit midway and nearly fell over several times. But it was all done with buckets of charm and a knowing wink, so Moren came up smelling of roses – and looking a little like Gael Garcia Bernal, which always helps.

Predictably, the highlight was that ‘Triple yay’ single that just follows them around – Young Folk, despite the aforementioned glitches. They hadn’t brought co-vocalist and Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman out from Sweden with them, so they recruited a local, Nisa, to sing Bergsman’s coy, heavy-accented part. It brought the house down. It was as if stadium rock had come to the Corner Hotel.