Introducing...the best of

Like a latter-day Paddy McAloon fronting Guillemots, David Pagmar - Sweden’s latest pop upstart - effortlessly croons his way through 17 lighter-than-air songs, all timpani percussion and ambitiouos brass arrangements with a wistful undercurrent. 

The 23-year-old has already released two albums in his native country and this – despite the misleading title – is his UK debut and follows on the heels of BBC6 Music/NME Radio Track Of The Week Set Sail Forever and the art-poppy Modesty Blaise. 

The Eighties comparisons don’t stop with McAloon – Names Not Forgotten (the next single) has a hint of Nick Heyward, while there’s more than a debt of gratitude owed to Roddy Frame on Castle In The Sky, while the falsetto on 1969 and The Windmill Turns All The Same skips forward a decade and sounds like David McAlmont. 

The inclusion of 17 songs might seem a touch wearisome, but while some of the slower numbers are a touch self-indulgent (the exquisite duet Pretenders apart), they rarely overstay their welcome. 

The poppier moments – the three singles, Paddy, Birthday Boy and Phone Call Drama – are evidence that Pagmar’s first assault on UK shores could be a productive one and provide the breakthrough that the similar, elder statesman of Swedish indie pop, Pelle Carlberg, has so far failed to achieve.