Jonas Game

Following electronic duo Air France and twee traditionalists the Honeydrips, Jonas Game was the third new artist to emerge on Sincerely Yours, the Gothenburg, Sweden-based label run by iconoclastic art-pop jokesters the Tough Alliance, with his debut single "New City Love" appearing in June 2007 and the full-length ADHD following that October. While he shares an endearing lighthearted streak and a finely honed pop sensibility with his labelmates, as well as a certain taste for appropriation (or perhaps "détournement," as their Situationist rhetoric would have it) -- "New City Love" borrowed its chorus lyrics from Nirvana's "Come as You Are" -- Game stands out as the most musically straightforward act on the Sincerely Yours roster. Lundquist was formerly the drummer of the popular straight-ahead rock outfit Bad Cash Quartet, who scored two Top Ten albums in the early 2000s, and his solo work continues in a similar vein, hearkening back to both classic British punk -- most notably the Clash -- and big-hearted American roots rockers like Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, which makes him something like a Swedish version of Ted Leo. In his visual presentation, Game echoes the Tough Alliance's faux-hooligan antics, appearing shirtless in the "New City Love" video and on the 7" sleeve, wearing a baseball cap and crouched in a manner that calls to mind a possible source for his new stage name; rapper the Game (if that connection is intentional, it wouldn't be the label's first reference to American hip-hop -- the Tough Alliance covered a 50 Cent song on one of their early EPs.) But on record, at least, he can't help but come across as a down-to-earth, ordinary guy, a refreshing antidote to the over-the-top hard rock posturing and insufferable cutesiness that dominates much of the Swedish indie scene. ~ K. Ross Hoffman