1) Andromeda; 2) Tennsoldater; 3) Vi är för alltid; 4) Den vänstra stranden; 5) Nattpojken & dagflickan (feat. Anna Ternheim); 6) Vi är inte längre där; 7) Förlåtelsen; 8) Skyll inte ifrån dig; 9) Gigi; 10) Falska profeter; 11) Den sista sången
Kent plan their funeral and finish on an album that doesn't dwell on the end, but rather focuses on delivering one last set of great songs.
Key tracks: "Vi är för alltid", "Falska profeter", "Den sista sången"
Bonus video: The trailer
In March 2016, Kent announced their funeral. The (fantastic) trailer for Då som nu för alltid featured a skeletal drummer marching through familiar iconography from the last three decades - mementos of album covers, music video scenes and logos across the career - and eventually leading a darkly foreboding parade through the deserted streets of Stockholm: the grim reaper visiting moments in history and gathering everyone together for one last time. If it wasn’t clear that something was up from the visuals alone, the stark 1990 ✞ 2016 message at the end of the video made it clear. Last album, last tour, quarter of a century coming to an end. Kent were going to their grave and they were going to celebrate it.
The announcement to call it a day was a shocker, given only two years earlier Kent had released Tigerdrottningen and had showed no signs of slowing down. Still, in retrospect, it's perhaps not coincidental that Tigerdrottningen was the unexpected harbinger of death. It had been the first album in Kent’s long history where it had felt like they were running out of steam, hiding its moments of brilliance underneath a consistent feeling of the once inspiring band operating on autopilot. It wouldn't be too farfetched to think that maybe the band themselves had realised something was amiss too; with Kent always having had a tight control over their journey, the relative non-event of Tigerdrottningen may as well have been a warning sign that the spark wasn’t there anymore. Rather than trying to correct the course, bowing out gracefully after all this time probably seemed like the right idea lest they risked of becoming a band way past their best-by date.
If you view Då som nu för alltid in that light, it makes a lot more sense on surface level. Despite the theatrics surrounding it (including that hilarious album cover), the album itself is relatively low on the drama and if it is about the end, then it's really subtle about it. Much of the record deals with closure and legacy but mostly in a very specific, character study -like manner that doesn't particularly tie in with the band without a stretch. Instead, Då som nu för alltid sounds like the band is picking things up where they left them the last time like nothing had happened - it’s a direct sequel to Tigerdrottningen, utilising much of its soundworld and aesthetics like it’s just another addition to the back catalogue without any hidden agendas. It’s not exactly what you would expect from a funeral wake and it’s almost bafflingly unconcerned about all that, but on the other hand it’s not like it would make any sense for Kent to back away now from what their sound had evolved to by this point, and when’s the last time you heard an intentional career closing record that experiments or stretches into new directions? The effortless synthesis between electronic programming, synthesizers and a real live rock band was a perfect outfit for Kent and they knew where to go with it and when to emphasise one aspect over another, and Då som nu för alltid flexes that skillset. There aren't too many tweaks from the last album but the sound was never Tigerdrottningen's issue and you could almost say that this second go at it is like Kent wanting to prove they could do justice to the ideas presented on that album.
This isn't a big tearjerking goodbye album; what you mostly have here instead is a really solid, often great album that falls neatly in line with everything else Kent had been doing in the 2010s. The song material is generally top notch, with plenty of peaks and relatively few lows: “Den vänstra stranden” sounds like an excerpt from Tigerdrottningen’s less exciting depths, “Skyll inte ifrån dig" gets buried in the final barrage of songs. There's a duet again, and "Nattpojken & dagflickan" with Anna Ternheim is by a long shot the best duet in Kent's catalogue, smoothly moving close to power ballad territory without actually stepping in it, keeping an element of tension and energy while absorbing the dramatics. The key trait tying the tracks together is that everything sounds grandiose. Every song on Då som nu för alltid is meant to sound at least a little bit epic and something to stir the rumbling emotions within the listener even if they never actually talk about the end directly - each track is a a hand to firmly hold onto during the last journey you'll ever take together, ready to become a lifeline if needed. It's often hopeful and at its heaviest merely bittersweet, but always grand and evocative. When the explosive chorus drums of "Andromeda" colour the stars in the sky in a flash of fireworks and children's choirs, when the extended finale of "Falska profeter" reprises the music played in the album trailer and turns it into a communal huddle moment, when "Vi är inte längre där" grows more and more into a 80s-styled stadium synth showstopper ready to release the stage pyrotechnics with each passing chorus - they all feel larger than life and incredibly important and personal in the moment in time that they inhabit. Even if the album avoids the obvious emotional checkpoints, it still aims to be something resonant and warm with every step and for the most part it succeeds.
The title drop track "Vi är för alltid" is the perfect representation of what Då som nu för alltid aims for, and it serves not as just Kent's last classic single before the end but also as the album's early anchor point for its themes. It's an archetypical Kent pop song the likes of which they had been dropping across the past handful of albums, but it's one that learned lessons along the way and strives to aim higher. To put it simply, it's a banger, a hot badger, it slaps - it’s an alluring verse which grows into a magnificent chorus that sounds even more titanic after it rises from the ashes of the the brief breakdown. There are many others like it on Då som nu för alltid, songs where Kent deliver a hell of a good pop song as they rely on the instincts they had built over the past few, more direct albums - "Tennsoldater"'s electronic twitch and the hard-hitting take-no-prisoners energy of "Förlåtelsen" especially (that final run!) - but none of them feel so vital as "Vi är för alltid". I'm a fan of subtle lyric changes and a special shoutout goes to the shift between its choruses, breakdown and the last chorus that is pure genius in how it hits entirely new emotional reaches with just little tweaks, moving from hopeful ("they will sing songs / make films / write books about us") to defeated ("just kidding, no one is going to sing songs..."), until it eventually morphs into pure desperation ("please make films about us, you must sing songs about us..."), and it sounds so magnificently anthemic the further it trails towards its worries about being forgotten. It's a multifaceted triumph, and the perfect title track (even if indirectly).
But if there is a key song here, it's obviously going to be "Den sista sången" - literally "The Last Song". Like most of the album it slyly dances around the elephant in the room as it describes a transatlantic moment of two destinies moving apart, and it takes it all the way until the very end and the very last lyrics for the subtext to finally become text: "This is the last moment we see / This is the last song I give to you”. As it does, the music swells in that exact wistful, melancholy yet beautiful manner that is how in your heart you always wanted this journey to end. There's that cliché about not being sad that it's over but glad that it happened, and that exact emotional note is what "Den sista sången" nails down, carrying a blue haze throughout its calm guitar riff, the inexplicably English-language middle-eight where the children's choir and echoing drums from "Andromeda" make their longing return back to earth and the appropriately sizeable finale that stays just short of becoming the kind of an epic ending that the song felt like it was building up towards. And I'm not going to lie, I would have loved for it to have had the big waterworks credits roll that the occasion calls for and the abrupt end feels downright cheeky: the last wink from the band, stubbornly making their own way as they always have done and denying even the smallest bit of obvious fan service. But I've made my peace with it and if anything, the swift closure brings, well, closure. It doesn't linger on, this chapter has finished and life moves on. It hits a different kind of emotional beat. "Den sista sången" is brilliant, and the perfect song to end a career with.
And then it's over, the funeral march has finished, but Då som nu för alltid barely lets that little fact define it as an album. I still don't really know which way I swing here - the sentimental side of me would have loved an album that milked the hell out of everything coming to an end, but not doing so and largely presenting itself as just an album among others has in some ways let it build a life beyond that reputation. It's easier to pick it up for a listen and simply treat it as the great album it is without that extra emotional weight behind it. There was always going to be bias around this album by way of simply knowing it is the end and that the band deliberately considered it as such, but by letting these songs breathe outside that context ensures the listener hears them primarily on their musical merits, and it's a great album just on that basis alone. Not within Kent's top tier perhaps, but a steadily consistent example of their talents in songwriting, arrangement and performance. For their last album, Kent decided to simply showcase the reasons they endured for 26 years and with which they built a grand discography worth exploring, focusing on delivering one last set of excellent songs over dwelling on their own funeral. It results in an album that stands up to the old highlights, and it’s something they can proudly close their story with.
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