Defining “Ulrika!”, the previous effort by the Swedish band Sternpost, as a manifesto of “unpopular pop” was not an intellectual whim, but rather the clear photograph of a radical and courageous declaration of intent. Today, with “unworld.afterpop”, the creature of Petter Herbertsson – former sound architect in Testbild – chooses to dialogue more openly with the song form. Yet, these sober baroque-pop miniatures categorically reject the logic of mass consumption, remaining anchored to an idea of aesthetic resistance. Sternpost's is an aristocratic narrative that evokes the geometric grace of High Llamas and the noble harmonies of Louis Philippe, without giving up that eccentric and hypnotic drive dear to Stereolab or absolute masters of songwriting like Paddy McAloon and Brian Wilson.
The sound itinerary of the Swedish band takes the form of a dreamlike labyrinth: a place of thought where you can get lost for the pure pleasure of finding yourself. It is a perpetual motion of destinations that immediately transform into new starting points, allowing time to expand between cultured Canterbury-sound style digressions (“Every Other Building”) and bossa nova geometries that blend into a sunshine-pop with finishes chiseled with scribe precision (“The Trees And I”).
The matter of the Sternposts remains, by its nature, a secret for a few initiates. Although “unworld.afterpop” possesses the genetic code of pop, its ingredients belong to a speculative and elaborate sphere. This is demonstrated by the refined interlocking melodies of “This Hibernation”, sonic theorems that challenge the banality of contemporary listening. The scores move like complex orchestral stratifications, yet they retain the crystalline fragility of a winter garden – as happens in the suspended and metaphysical “From The Mouth Of Stones” – or the twilight melancholy of a sunset, of which “100 Days” is a shining example thanks to its poignant intertwining of piano and strings.
In this microcosm, the painstaking attention to detail never suffocates the gracefulness of the composition. The album oscillates between oblique waltzes that evoke the charm of old cinema films (“Part Time Ripples”), songs noir with Central European nuances (“Phantasmal City”) and pop delights that seem to re-emerge intact from the golden age of Prefab Sprout (“Distant And Radiant”). The work maintains a motion of perpetual balance suspended between ethereal melodies and harmonic virtuosity (“My Silent Dream”), oscillating between twentieth-century romanticism à la George Gershwin and syncopated and cerebral dance steps à la Leonard Bernstein (“Soft Like Swans”).
Petter Herbertsson thus confirms himself as an eternal cult artist, custodian of an intellectual attitude already explored with Testbild and shared with his ally Louis Philippe. There is a rare and magical mastery in the way this musician inhabits the twilight between dreaming and waking, a middle territory governed by pure imagination and the physics of seven notes. The scant three minutes of “The Report” would be enough – an ideal point of intersection in which Prefab Sprout shake hands with Crayola Lectern – to deliver his name to the Olympus of great contemporary authors. But pop, when it is so absolute, is a secret pleasure that perhaps it is better not to reveal completely, leaving the listener the privilege of discovery.
07/24/2026
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
