Radio Dept. – Pet Grief (20th Anniversary Edition)

The Radio Dept.'s Pet Grief returns on this 20th Anniversary Edition, bringing the Swedish band's second album back to vinyl two decades after its original 2006 release. Arriving after Lesser Matters, it deliberately sidestepped that debut's fuzzier guitar rush in favour of something cleaner, calmer and more inward-looking: dream-pop and indie-pop shaded with synth-pop touches, programmed beats, soft-focus keys, piano and strings.

That shift is a big part of what makes Pet Grief so distinctive in the band's catalogue. Contemporary accounts point to touchstones like Prefab Sprout, The Blue Nile and Pet Shop Boys, but The Radio Dept. keep the music understated rather than slick. Across its twelve songs, the record circles loss, memory and quiet sadness, with melodies that stay light on their feet even when the mood is bruised. Tracks like “Pet Grief” and “The Worst Taste In Music” show how easily the band could make melancholy feel graceful instead of heavy.

There is also a useful bit of context behind the album's atmosphere: during this period, the band were approached by music supervisor Brian Reitzell in connection with Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, and some unused material from that wider creative spell fed into the album's world. Heard now, Pet Grief still stands as one of The Radio Dept.'s most elegant and emotionally precise records—less immediate than its predecessor, perhaps, but all the more rewarding for its restraint.

Reviews

• there is something shy and lovely about Pet Grief - The Guardian
• it's a rich and evocative mood piece, and still eminently worth hearing. - AllMusic.com