The Tough Alliance’s Eric Berglund doesn’t like talking about how he makes his music. Instead, he insists that like a flower, his music is infinitely beautiful and shouldn’t involve thinking – just a lot of feeling. Despite his pretentious tone, there is a lot to feel (and some things to think about) on the Swede-pop maestro’s first album under the ceo moniker. The song titles have an obvious aversion to capital letters, and the eight-song set clocks in at just under half-an-hour, but the whole thing comes off as a pure auditory joyride.

Berglund wrote the album as a reaction to being less paralyzed by the confusion and fear that haunted him in the past, and the new ecstasy in his life is almost palpable from the first bars of the album’s second track, “iIlluminta”, which he admits sounds a bit like the theme from “Beverly Hills 90210”. The song features a disco-ready bass line and sweet harmonies where Berglund sings lines about “falling on the wings of honesty.” It’s a classic example of the other candied pop morsels (“oh god, oh dear”, “love and do what you will”) that make White Magic almost feel like a guilty pleasure.

While the album is clearly marks a new beginning, visits to Berglunds past happen on the title track and “come with me”, which revisit the synthesis of pure pop and club ready beats that informed Tough Alliance tracks like “Neo Violence” and “KokaKola Veins”.

Still, White Magic is growth and the most emotional moments come on “den blomsterid nu kommer”. The song – awash in organs and electronic static – is Berglund’s take on a hymn that young Swedes sing at the end of every school year. The lyrics basically celebrate the coming of summer and allude to the gleaming sun and fields of golden grain. There’s crowd noise in the background and, at times, it sounds like he sampled the sounds of seagulls.

However, the best samples show themselves on “no mercy”. The albums best offering is a three-and-a-half visit to the Far East that features the sound of actual katana swords playfully mixed on top of the albums most frenetic, yet catchy, guitar strumming. Berglund sings about illicit drug use (“So, so lame/makes me want to smoke crack”), and the track sounds ends up coming off like a lost single from The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

While even Berglund can’t exactly match the grandiose weirdness of the Lips, lets hope he stays on this happy kick because, as White Magic proves, the results are fun as hell.