Up Against the Wall

Peter Bjorn and John will always be associated with "Young Folks" — the 2006 whistling earworm that became inescapable. But the Swedish trio are more interesting than that one song suggests, and Living Thing (2009) proved it: harder, more electronic, leaning away from their folk-pop breakthrough.

Up Against the Wall is among their most propulsive tracks — guitar-forward and urgent in a way their more wistful work isn't. It showed a band willing to complicate their own identity rather than repeat what had worked.

Living in the shadow of a song as omnipresent as "Young Folks" is a particular artistic challenge. Peter Bjorn and John have handled it with consistency and occasional genuine surprise.