The experience of a lengthy hiatus is not a new one to Nina Persson. The Swedish songstress and Cardigans frontwoman recorded and unveiled the first album from her A Camp solo project in 2001, in the middle of a five year gap between Cardigans albums Gran Turismo (1998) and Long Gone Before Daylight (2003). Persson's work on that album, joined by Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, subsequently affected the tone and style of Long Gone Before Daylight, which took on a reflective, country-tinged sound. Since the last Cardigans album in 2005, Persson's sole musical peep over the ramparts was her duet with James Dean Bradfield on the 2007 Manic Street Preachers comeback single "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough". In 2009, it finally seems like the planets are again in alignment for a second A Camp record, and so Colonia is born. What's different this time is that Persson is joined by her husband, American film composer Nathan Larson, and fellow Swede and co-producer Niclas Frisk. There are guests too - ex-Smashing Pumpkins member James Iha, Swedish singer-songwriter Nicolai Dunger, US singer Joan Wasser (AKA Joan As Policewoman) and Kevin March, drummer for the now-defunct Guided by Voices. But how to condense all this history and talent into a solid album?One of Persson's gifts has long been a knack for combining wry, cynical lyrical observations with incongruously upbeat, poppy arrangements. On Colonia, that is again a strong recurring theme. In this case though, familiarity doesn't breed contempt - whilst this is territory Persson's explored before, her travelogues are still irresistable. Opener "The Crowning" is a classic piece of Persson, an ironic and mocking document from the unfortunate guests at a surreal ceremony for a "useless, ruthless" figure of some sort - as the acoustic guitar and strings craft glorious pop, Persson's unique and still-fascinating voice drips venom so sweetly that you'd totally fail to grasp what was going on if you weren't listening carefully enough. Single "Stronger Than Jesus" is a similarly nuanced piece of songwriting, cynically dissecting the ideal of love through a filter of a disaffection and disappointment, warning that romance can "do you like a shotgun" if you're not careful.That theme of disaffection appears again in the duet with Nicolai Dunger, the curious "Golden Teeth & Silver Medals". As the two radically different voices exchange lines, Perrson asks "Would you like to prove me wrong?" and Dunger replies "No, I will grieve with you." It's far from a pop happy ending, but we've given up expecting such a black and white approach from Persson these days. What makes the song especially endearing is how self-referential the lyrics are - they sing of "meeting in this song" and refer to each other by name. As bleak as prospects seem though, the line "we'll be second best until we've won" hints at an underdog comeback. That's a recurring theme too - as pessimistic as some of these songs are thematically, the lush strings and, gently building arrangements and Persson's optimistic delivery always seem to signal that there are better things on the horizon.Elsewhere there's a charming song seemingly about the plight of animals shipped off to urban zoos in the form of "Here Are Many Wild Animals", the wonderfully bittersweet "Chinatown" and the string-dominated, wistful "Love Has Left The Room". Strings really do play quite a vital role in Colonia's sound, and while much of the album flirts with the idea of going overboard and sounding like "Good Night", it never happens. In love with cinematic, romantic sounds they may be, but Persson, Larson and Frisk aren't daft enough to overdo anything. From backing vocals to drums to strings and everything in between, Colonia feels like an immaculately crafted package. Even the sub-3o second instrumental "Eau De Colonia" is so perfectly carried off that you barely notice it until it's over - in the best possible way. My only criticisms are minor - "Bear on the Beach" feels like a little bit of a weak link, and is possibly placed unwisely in the tracklisting; also, closer "The Weed Got Here First" has a plodding instrumental outro tacked onto the end of it which just doesn't feel needed at all... a more dramatic finale might have been more appropriate, given the journey we've been taken on. Nevertheless, Colonia is an excellent album, marking A Camp out as more than just a simple solo project. You ought to hear this. 89%A Camp on MySpace