the swedish pop duo club 8 have mastered their craft. they are on par with saint etienne when they want to be, and they invented the gentle subtle pop thing that camera obscura have been purveying. I just returned from a road trip up the east coast and I must have played their new album, the boy who couldn’t stop dreaming (just out in the united kingdom anyway on our pal sean’s fortuna pop records), like 89 times. what better to listen to on an icy white day than icy blond swedes doing their perfect pop best? I have to tell you, when I drove on I-95 between quantico and lorton I must have seen about seven giant rainbows — the biggest and clearest I have ever seen — against the formerly gray and dreary sky there were zillions of seagulls. club 8 made the whole thing even more strange and beautiful.