For Nina Persson and The Cardigans, much has changed. The five-piece from the Swedish village of Jonkoping who came to our attention with a dayglo pop album called Life in 1995 has metamorphosed into a band willing to show a very dark centre. Perhaps it was always there (and perhaps it was down to a national fixation on Ingmar Bergman) yet for all of this, listeners time and time again chose to view the kitsch angles instead.

But since the massive success of the Lovefool single, The Cardigans can now set their own agenda and the audience gladly follows. Included on the soundtrack for the Leonardo Di Caprio starring William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Lovefool became the second most played track on US radio in 1997 and brought the band to a new level. Such exposure meant that they could take what others would perceive as chances when it came to recording Gran Turismo, their current album.

For Nina, Gran Turismo allowed her fascination with country music to come to the fore. She lists people like Lucinda Williams, Neil Young - that tradition which also includes people like Red House Painters, Smog, Will Oldham - as influences. "By listening almost exclusively to that sort of music and hearing those lyrics, you do tend to concentrate more on the black stuff. This fascination has been building for a few years. We were on tour with Beck and we went for a tour of the country museum in Nashville. I've always had a big urge to understand America the country, because as a European, I obviously think it's very messed up and there must be a reason for it and country music is obviously their folk music," Nina says.

Naturally, a heavy-duty country fix does bring the issue of lyrics to the surface. "When we formed, lyrics were secondary and just throwaway messages and so was the emotion" she explains. "From experience and from listening to music, we now know that something has to be said in the lyrics. We're also ready to make, I suppose, statements and to actually talk about things rather than just observe. "I don't necessarily think that we were dealing in irony or kitsch at the start, we were just playing it safe. We didn't want to be poets or artists, we wanted to make pop songs."

"We're a bit older now and we know what follows the making of an album. We know we're going to play those songs a million times and talk about them a million times so we must have something to say. "Promotion and interviews drag but it is your way of communicating what the hell you want to communicate. If you don't do it, you leave it to others to do the communicating. "Then, of course, people will think you are just a cute kitsch band that like vintage clothing and are into Burt Baccarach so you have to tell them that you're not."

Nina's new-found ease with the role of frontwoman is very apparent. Not only is she happy to front the video for My Favourite Game (a clip of which was banned by MTV because of her unsafe driving techniques) but she is also happy to play the game. "I'm a lot cooler now about the way it works with the front figures in a band, especially if it's a woman. This is partly from getting used to it and partly from realising that it is going to make everything easier and more fun. "We don't have to put as much energy into fighting that any more. We've been trying for five years to make people realise that we are a band and not a pretty girl with some backing musicians. And just when people come around to accepting that, we accept that we're comfortable with how it actually is!"

The Cardigans play Dublin Castle on Monday, May 3rd, supporting Catatonia