Oh, those crazy Swedes – No.3 is actually jj’s second full length release (no.1 having been a single). Although calling it a full length album is a tad generous when you consider the running time is a mere 27 minutes. Although it must be said that it feels somewhat longer. It starts strongly enough – My Life is an ethereal piano led cover of a song by The Game feat. Lil Wayne. Jj turn it into a hauntingly beautiful ballad, with Elin Kastlander’s vocals adding a poignancy to lines like ‘I’m just wondering why you haven’t taken my life/ What the hell am I doing right?’.
Sadly such high points become increasingly rare as the album progresses and the question of what the band are doing right seems increasingly relevant. Even that track seems undeveloped and would probably be more affecting if they hadn’t already done a similar job on Lil’ Wayne’s Ecstasy on the last album.
As each track bleeds into the next the songs lose any sense of focus and you get the sense that these are more sketches than fully fleshed out songs. Those honey-sweet vocals start to veer too far into the territory of Enya . For large parts of the album she sounds bored, which doesn’t exactly help to engage the listener. The slow-paced and over-produced synth becomes cloying, whilst even the strongest songs (such as the acoustic Light) are so slight that they are blown out of your mind almost as soon as they end.
The songs herein where apparently recorded at the same time as those for jj no.2 which makes sense as they feel overwhelmingly like re-heated left-overs.