This month, Helsingborg, Sweden’s The Sounds return with Crossing the Rubicon, their third album of synth-accented glam-pop.
Awash in piss and vinegar, the record picks up right where 2006’s Dying To Say This To You left off, with the band plowing its way through athletic, menacing rock anthems with sweaty dexterity under the guidance of sassy siren Maja Ivarsson’s raspy yelps.
Team Last Call chatted up drummer Fredrik Nilsson about the new album and the Swedish cockiness curve.
Team Last Call: What were your goals musically with this album?
Fredrik Nilsson: We just wanted to make an album that was totally the band’s [idea] of what our music is, and not someone else’s. We did all the demos ourselves in our own studio in Sweden, and then we decided to not have any labels whatsoever involved in the process of making the album. The five members of the band, we financed everything, all the album costs. We got rid of pretty much all of our old labels in various territories. Right now we’re licensing the album here in the States to a record label, but The Sounds own the album.
TLC: Going into your third album, do you feel satisfied with where you are as a band?
FN: The only thing I really want now is for the album to be out. It’s much more fun to play the new songs when people actually know them. I’m sure by the end of the tour cycle I’ll be really sick of the songs and just want to write a new album, but that’s the way it goes.
TLC: You’ve always been plagued with comparisons to Blondie. I always thought it was unfair, until I heard “Beatbox” from the new album, which sounds exactly like “Rapture” …
FN: Blondie is a great band, but I don’t think any of us is a Blondie fan or has any Blondie records or anything like that. To me, that’s just a lazy thing that journalists do, is to compare a band to something else that already exists. I think that’s a really easy and cheap way. To me, that’s really boring. It has more to do with the look of the band than the sound of our band.
TLC: You also get grouped in with the whole ’80s revival scene.
FN: We all grew up in the ’80s, so it factors in somewhere, but we never set out to have an ’80s sound. It surprises me sometimes. As soon as there are keyboards on the tracks, they all refer to the ’80s, like that was the only decade that had keyboards.
TLC: You’ve got a reputation for being a really cocky band.
FN: I don’t think we ever considered ourselves to be a cocky band. We’re a self-confident band.
TLC: I meant cocky for Swedish people.
FN: They don’t like it in Sweden when you’re too self-confident. They have this saying – Jantelagen, it’s called in Swedish – that basically says you’re not better than anyone else. Everybody’s the same. Don’t think you’re better than anyone else, because you’re not. We don’t think we’re better than anyone else. We just think we’re really good.
TLC: People have accused you of not being Swedish enough. Is there such a thing as being too Swedish?
FN: Yeah, there is. I think you can only explain it to other Swedish people. But yeah, you can definitely be too Swedish. There’s a lot of people like that in Sweden. They’re very, I don’t want to say self-centered, but everything that happens in Sweden is really important and everything that happens outside of Sweden is not so important.
TLC: A lot of Americans know your music best from the GEICO caveman commercial. Is that good or bad?
FN: All ways of coming across our band to us is a good way. But if you see one song in a TV commercial and then you go and see the band, you might be in for a real surprise.
TLC: Maja is always making the Hottest Women in Rock lists. What’s it like for the rest of you to see stuff like that?
FN: All publicity like that is going to rub off on the band. It kind of makes me wonder where all the Hottest Drummers lists are, and why I’m not on them.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
IKEA. ABBA. Fish. Meatballs. Sweden, you just give and give.
From The Cardigans to The Sounds to Refused to Peter Bjorn And John, Swedish musical exports have almost always been worth taking a chk-a-chance on (Ace of Base notwithstanding). That list expands in 2009 with the release of the self-titled EP from Love In October, a Chicago band led by brothers and Swedish expatriates Erik and Kent Widman.
Stuck somewhere in the quirk-rock spectrum between Dinosaur Jr. and Modest Mouse, the band flip-flops between blissfully fuzzed-out rockers and mellow dance tunes, anxious yelps and hushed croons, biting off Built to Spill’s manic guitar heroics one minute and the Get-Up Kids’ keys-accented power pop the next. (GUK drummer Rob Pope co-produced the band’s 2008 full-length.) Depending on the song, Love In October’s music comes across as either playfully dramatic or dramatically playful; either way, it’s Swedish through and through.
“I would say 75 percent of our sound comes from Swedish influences,” says Erik, the band’s singer, guitarist and pianist, who emigrated from Sweden to Michigan in 2000 for college. “I also had the privilege to have a really good music teacher who taught me a lot of Swedish folk music theory. Now I’m trying to take what I learned a long time ago and recall that, but then put it into a rock and roll context.”
The Love In October EP (released May 26) is the band’s third release since the brothers Widman reunited in Minneapolis in 2006. It’s the first, however, since the band stumbled upon its current sound. Previous records were more pedestrian in their approach, with a more obvious, swing-for-the-fences appeal that earned LiO dubious comparisons to Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance and bands of that ilk.
“I don’t even know why we were doing it,” Erik shrugs. “We didn’t enjoy listening to our own music, so it was kind of like, ‘What the fuck are we doing? Let’s actually write something that A) we want to play, and B) we want to listen to.’ I think we kind of found our own path to go down.”
The move towards a more natural and raw sound has benefited Love In October in more ways than one. Aside from churning out a praiseworthy EP that nestles nicely on your iPod between Lou Reed and Lovedrug, the band has made major strides into the mainstream market with the placement of its song “Like Nothing Ever Happened” in national TV and radio advertisements for Shoe Carnival. With one catchy, quirky pop song, Love In October has more or less eliminated the necessity for the record deal it was chasing so earnestly in its first few years. The irony is almost too big to swallow.
“Now we write music to please ourselves,” Erik says, “and if anybody likes it, that’s good.”
Try less, get more. Sweden, I don’t know how you do it.
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
Morrissey was once quoted as saying – presumably in between sobbing fits – that “we all need rain and good old depression.”
If that’s the case, then bring on the Cowboy Junkies, whose “gothic Americana” hymns have been ushering college students through breakups and breakdowns for over two decades.
Not that the Junkies are all doom and gloom. Oftentimes, what is mistaken for darkness is just the music’s sloth-like pacing; on their breakthrough album, 1988’s The Trinity Session, the Junkies managed to take both “Blue Moon” and the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane” and turn them into drowsy, gorgeous mopers that creep along with all the ferocity of a sedated snail. It can come across as a real rainy-day downer; but, like Schindler’s List, it can also be edifying and ultimately just the slightest bit uplifting.
“It’s certainly dark, what we write about, but I think there are also glimmers of hope in all our stuff,” says chief songwriter Michael Timmins. “When people say that music’s depressing, I find that very inaccurate. I think that’s a misuse of the term ‘depressed.’ ‘Depressed’ to me is something that’s lacking any emotion at all. To me, a mindless pop song is more depressing than anything we ever did.”
For the band’s newest album, At The End of Paths Taken, Timmins spent some time pondering family life and the inevitable changeover that takes place as children are born and grandparents pass away. Family is a natural subject for Timmins, considering that two of his three bandmates – Margo and Peter – are his siblings.
“Everybody in this band’s got young kids and aging parents,” Michael says. “I just wanted to write about those relationships – up to your father and down to your kids – and how those affect one another.”
The album – the 11th in the band’s 20-plus-year history – has enough molasses-y ballads and folky meanderings to satisfy longtime fans, but is also characterized by some newfound tension. Songs like the swinging “Cutting Board Blues” represent the Junkies at their most rocking, while the spooky “Mountain” features the unsettling juxtaposition of Margo’s soft vocals and the spoken-word droning of the Timmins’ father reading an excerpt from his autobiography. “My Little Basquiat” seems to be the album’s centerpiece; the song creeps ominously along, with Margo singing achingly about her children, until Michael breaks down the door with bursts of buzzsaw guitar that voice the morbid fear that comes with loving someone that deeply.
As bands like Oasis so ably demonstrate, siblings don’t always make for the best work partners. But Michael maintains that the Timmins’ relationship is not only workable, but might be the very reason why the Junkies have persevered for so long.
“I think it’s helped us,” he says matter-of-factly. “A lot of brothers and sisters don’t, but we know how to communicate. We know each other’s personalities and we know each other’s moods, and we know generally when to back off.
“There are very few bands who last this long, especially with the original lineup. You can probably count five. There’s U2 and there’s … mmm …,” Timmins laughs. “But we still enjoy working with each other and performing and recording. As long as it’s fun, we’ll continue to do it.”
*Reprinted from Fly Magazine
By the time you read this, we will be just five months away from welcoming the next generation of Team Last Call into the world.
I have been doing my best over the past few months to prepare for the arrival of the baby – fixing up its room, learning to say “poop” without laughing, buying adorable Eagles onesies. You can question a lot of things in life, but my baby’s team spirit won’t be one of them.
Mostly, though, I’ve been eating. I’ve been putting on weight at an alarming pace over the past several weeks, which is what you can expect when you go donut for donut with a pregnant lady. My wife, for her part, has become an unstoppable cosmic snacking machine. A beautiful, glowing snacking machine, but a snacking machine nonetheless. Cookies, sticky buns, muffins, cakes, small woodland animals – if it crosses her path, it’s lunch. I haven’t seen our cat in days, and it’s starting to get a little awkward.
When not eating, we’ve been devoting our time to brainstorming names for our baby, which isn’t nearly as easy as I had assumed. Our first choice for a name, Zazel, was cast aside once we Googled it and found out it was the name of a very hardcore porn movie. For similar reasons, we also had to cross Rambone, Pocahiney and E-Three the Extra Testicle off the list.
After that first round of cuts, we were left with just a handful of names on our list of favorites. Then we found out that Michael Jackson had already taken Blanket, Prince Michael and Prince Michael II, and things started going downhill. A few minutes of research later, our list was left in tatters. Moon Unit and Diva Muffin? Taken by Frank Zappa. Daisy Boo and Poppy Honey? Taken by the Naked Chef. Moxie CrimeFighter? Taken. Pilot Inspektor? Taken. Jermajesty, Little Pixie and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily? Taken, taken, taken.
My wife and I agreed early on that we’d each have a certain number of vetoes when it came to our baby’s name, and I’ve already had to use a few already, like when my wife suggested Bumpy. I’m pretty sure Balloon was on her list, too. Likewise, my wife has overruled some of my personal favorites, including Bean and Awesome. And something about Conan The Dest Royer just didn’t hit her the right way.
True story: I once tried picking a name by flipping through a dictionary with my eyes closed, randomly stopping on a page and jabbing my index finger into the book. I landed on Presto-Chango, which I personally think is the best name we’ve come up with yet. My wife fails to see the attraction.
It’s not like we’ll take just any weird name, but I do want something with some character. Giving the world another Ashley, Madison or Jordan doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. I don’t want the poor thing to bore itself to sleep every night.
There are some drawbacks to giving a child an unusual name, though. There’s always the danger that he or she might get picked on or made fun of at school, and I would never want that for my child, unless it became the president of Young Republicans or something and really deserved it. There’s also the risk that the baby’s distinguished name could give it an inflated ego and a heightened sense of superiority, which is how things like Rush Limbaugh happen. Speaking of Rush Limbaugh, Oxycontin is another really good baby name.
But there are a lot of pluses to having an unusual name, too. All an ordinary name can get you is second place. The Joe Biden to someone else’s Barack Obama. The Sam to someone else’s Frodo. The (insert name of professional golfer here) to Tiger Woods. The George Bush to ... well, anyone, really.
But when you have a unique name, everyone wants you to succeed. Nobody cares about someone named Lou Phillips. But Lou Diamond Phillips? Put that guy in the movies!
That’s why famous people are always changing their names. Engelbert Humperdinck was born Arnold George Dorsey. Queen Latifah’s birth name is Dana Owens. Sigourney Weaver’s real first name is Susan. And Rush Limbaugh is a talentless turd.
“Everyone I know with an unusual name loves it,” said Penn Jillette, proud father of Moxie CrimeFighter and Zolten, in an interview with the New York Times about his children’s names. “It’s only the losers named Dave that think having an unusual name is bad, and who cares what they think? They’re named Dave.”
Of course, having a good name doesn’t necessarily solve all of your problems. Despite the inherent advantages, many people with unusual names somehow still manage to be unsuccessful, whether it’s due to a lack of morals (Scooter Libby), lack of talent (Keanu Reeves) or lack of tusks when you’re clearly supposed to be a wooly mammoth (Snuffleupagus). So clearly there are no guarantees. But it certainly gives you a running start in life, and frankly, I think that’s something we owe little Presto-Chango.
Brooklyn by-way-of Colorado band Chairlift caught America’s ear in late 2008, when iPod graciously decided to use its quirk-pop single, “Bruises,” in the ad campaign for the new Nano-Chromatic. (“I tried to do handstands for you …”)
That indelibly catchy single is one of maybe two exceptions on Chairlift’s otherwise thoroughly dark and creepy album, Does You Inspire You (re-released by Columbia Records on April 21), a surrealist take on ’80s electro-pop. It’s hardly a mass-appeal album, but with “Bruises” luring hapless pop fans in like a siren, it’s able to sink its teeth in long enough to infect.
Team Last Call caught up with guitarist, co-vocalist and super-weirdo Aaron Pfenning during the band's spring tour with The Killers.
Team Last Call: What’s the experience been like for you over the past year or so?
Aaron Pfenning: The experience has been so Technicolor. It’s gone from plaid to denim.
TLC: It’s denim?
AP: Yeah. That’s the fastest and easiest way to explain the last couple years.
TLC: Has it been difficult adjusting to all of the media attention?
AP: It doesn’t bother me. Media like YouTube comments?
TLC: Media like the 36-page press kit of interviews your publicist sent me.
AP: [Our publicist is] on top of everything. I guess we have surrounded ourselves with people that we really like to work with and that we trust. Essentially, we can kind of stay focused on staying free spirits. So I think that the attention, since that was your question, hasn’t really affected us much. We’ve still been in our own world.
TLC: Career-wise, have things gone like you’d hoped since the commercial started airing?
AP: I think so. I think the commercial was a huge baseball bat in the face, in a good way. The iPod commercial was like, wham. It just kind of all came together at once.
TLC: I don’t think I want a baseball bat to the face, even in a good way.
AP: Yeah, that’s probably the wrong way to explain it. Maybe a baseball bat to a baseball.
TLC: Do you remember seeing the commercial for the first time?
AP: I was actually in an Apple store picking up my computer. My computer was getting repaired. I walked in and one of the employees was playing it behind the desk.
TLC: Did you tell the person it
was you?
AP: I think I mumbled something about it and they just thought I was crazy. So I just paid for my computer and left.
TLC: There is a creepy, sinister thing going with your music. Where does that come from?
AP: I think dark music is far more interesting. Caroline [Polachek, singer] and I started writing music basically as a soundtrack for haunted houses. When we were in Colorado, I had a big shed in my backyard and she and I would just drink a bunch of yerba maté tea and just stay up all night coming up with really frightening music.
TLC: You’re portrayed as a bunch of weirdos.
AP: Uh-huh.
TLC: Do you think you’re, um, atypical?
AP: We’re not super-strange. We’re just a little bit off. Oddballs. I’ll go into a meeting with Columbia and five minutes into it I’ll realize that, “Oh, shit. I just said something that really freaked people out.” I totally have to catch myself. It’s not how most people talk or how most people think of things. Columbia, I have to give them a lot of credit, because they took a really big risk on a band that’s pretty far out there. Patrick [Wimberly], our drummer, he’s pretty responsible. He’s like the Great Gatsby of Nashville. He’s such a ladies man, and so on top of everything, whereas Caroline and I, we’ll just wander off, like we did today, and no one knows where we are and we lost track of time.
TLC: You’ve described your music as an antidote to living in New York.
AP: In the course of making the album, we realized how over-stimulated we’ve become living in New York. Constant going out to clubs and noise everywhere. You go from ice cream trucks and busses to cars and people yelling on the street, and then you go into a club and there are people yelling at the bar, all these wizards and techno magicians everywhere blasting things at you. There’s visual imagery everywhere. It kind of never stops. So we figured out how to make music that was a little more calming. It’s affective in the most minimal and haunting and memorable way.
In December, I started growing a beard that, while it’s probably just coincidence, definitely helped the Eagles get into the playoffs. It was a mighty beard, a beard of hope, a beard to light the way in dark times. It was a beard you can believe in.
Then, of course, the Eagles got trounced in the NFC Championship Game, and I assumed that my beard’s magical powers had fizzled out. As it turns out, quite the opposite was true – as I discovered less than a week after the Super Bowl, when my wife’s pregnancy test came up positive.
My wife and I had been trying to conceive for several disappointing – and, I might add, beardless – months by that point, and things just weren’t looking good. But then I grew my beard of virility and our dream was realized. And now, my face clad in furry manliness, I am preparing to enter the magical world of diapers and singing purple dinosaurs and sleep deprivation called fatherhood.
Our magical beard-induced pregnancy is terrific for a number of reasons, including the fact that I’ll finally have a proper photo for my profile on Facebook, where, unless you’re holding a baby, your friends literally can’t even see you. Plus, until the baby comes in October, we get to use the sweet parking spaces at the grocery store. And in December, we can give all of our friends and family the greatest gift of their lives, a Christmas card with our family’s picture on it.
One potential problem with the pregnancy is that I kind of don’t like kids. My sister’s kids are two of the most magnificent creatures on Earth, but beyond that, I just don’t care for children. The crying, the pooping, the complete inability to hold their liquor – it’s just not for me. And if they have any appreciation whatsoever of the Philadelphia Eagles, they certainly don’t know how to show it. They’re messy and selfish and think the whole world revolves around them, and so do I, and that’s a bad combination.
And yet, I sit here already dizzyingly, incomprehensibly, inside-and-out saturated with love for this baby of mine, which as I write is somewhere between the size of a strawberry and a plum. It has arms and legs and is just now starting to develop facial features, including what looked in the sonogram to be the beginnings of a fine-looking beard. It also theoretically lost its tail this week, which seems like a positive thing to me. Presumably, it’s also well along in the development of its Steelers-hating gland. Good baby.
It’s mind-blowing to think that there will soon be a little person running around that got half of its genetic makeup from me. There goes its career in the NBA. It can also forget about ever figuring out the square root of anything, or the difference between baking soda and baking powder, or how to change a tire. But while it’s stranded helplessly by the side of the road waiting for AAA to show up, it’ll be able to write lots of sarcastic jokes about its own ineptitude. That’s called a life skill.
My friends have been an endless source of support throughout these early weeks of pregnancy, taking time out of their busy schedules each day to e-mail and text encouraging notes like “Say goodbye to your freedom” and “Your life is no longer your own” and “You’ve just been given a life sentence.” Neat things like that. And they’re all dads, too, so I know they’re just loving this. Suffice it to say, I’m acutely aware that my life is about to change. Forever. But I have a feeling that whatever sacrifices I have to make won’t be anything my beard and I can’t handle.
In the months since discovering my wife was pregnant, I’ve been stuck in a perpetual state of what I can only describe as excitement with a side of white-hot terror. I think about the baby approximately once every five seconds, and each time say the exact kind of word that I shouldn’t use anymore now that I’m going to be a dad. Everything I see now is viewed through the eyes of an expectant father, meaning that everything is broken down into three basic categories: bad for baby, really bad for baby and Rush Limbaugh. For example, my car is a death trap that shakes and sputters and doesn’t have functioning seatbelts in the back seat, and is therefore bad for baby. My Jack Russell is genetically programmed to hunt down and devour small animals, and seems to find small children particularly tasty, and is therefore really bad for baby. And Rush Limbaugh is a lumpy, antagonistic, pill-popping demonic gasbag, and is therefore Rush Limbaugh.
The point is, the world seems like one big, bad, dangerous place when you’ve got a baby on the way. I’m already prowling around the house like a bear protecting its young from danger, by which I mean Rush Limbaugh, even though all I’ve seen of the baby are squiggly ultrasound images of it doing backstrokes inside my wife’s belly. I love that little strawberry to a terrifying degree. Elizabeth Stone once wrote of having a baby, “It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.” Now I’m starting to understand what she meant.
Part of my morning routine each weekday is to listen to WITF’s call-in program Radio Smart Talk, a terrific new show that I appreciate for both its insightfulness and the fact that it means one less hour a day of classical music.
Several weeks ago, Radio Smart Talk did a program about a new gun law that has already been passed in many parts of PA. Apparently, the “lost gun law,” as it’s called, is causing quite an outrage within the NRA community, which is a very bad thing, in that these people by definition like to spend their downtime shooting things. In order to smooth out the situation, I’d like to, in a completely unbiased and not at all gun-hating way, take a moment to more fully explain the law.
The several gun owners who called in to the program came across as intelligent and reasonable and not at all like the kind of people who would murder someone who made fun of them. That being said, I’d still like to clarify that I’m not interested in choosing sides or stirring up trouble that in any way could result in me getting shot a lot. I promise to be understanding and respectful of gun owners and extremely sensitive to the fact that they know where I work and what I look like. So any readers expecting to see a column full of fiery rhetoric about how owning a gun is “lame” or “dumb” or “super-lame and dumb” is going to be very disappointed.
It just so happens that I love guns. I also love NASCAR, plus Old Milwaukee beer, and agree wholeheartedly that Sarah Palin should be president because she’s hot. So clearly, there’s no need for anyone to shoot anyone else.
And now, without any further ado about the fact that I would totally marry a gun if I could, it’s time to take a look at the law. The “lost gun law” can basically be summarized as such: If you own a gun, and that gun is lost or stolen, your wife and children will be sold to a democrat. Just kidding! All it says is that you’re required by law to report your missing gun to authorities within 72 hours. That’s it.
As many gun owners have astutely observed, this law is a clear violation of their god-given rights, especially their right to lose their deadly weapon and not do anything about it. But here’s why the law is important: It will help to cut down on the widespread practice of “straw sales,” or the sale of guns by legal gun owners to people who have no business being anywhere near a gun, like a terrorist, or Dick Cheney. Which I realize is redundant. Under the old law, when a gun is discovered at a crime scene and traced back to its original owner, the owner can simply claim that he lost the gun. While the gun owner in this scenario is, technically speaking, an idiot, he is not a criminal, and is therefore off the hook. But under the new law, that person would at least be held accountable if he knowingly lost his gun, especially if he knowingly lost it under a bag of money handed to him by a felon.
How you can prove that someone knew his gun was missing is unclear. But even if the law has some imperfections, it’s sure to at least slow down the illegal sale of weapons. So to me, the law is worth passing, even if you can’t always enforce it. I mean, you’d never be able to enforce a ban on listening to Nickelback’s music, either, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.
According to the NRA, all this law does is “victimize the victims” of gun theft. And they’ve got a point. First someone takes your gun, and now you’re forced by law to report it? That’s oppressive. Next they’ll expect you to go crying to the police every time someone steals your car.
But all lawmakers are really asking is that 1) if you own a gun, you do your very best to not sell it to terrorists, and 2) if you do sell it, I mean lose it, just give the police a little heads-up that there’s a new deadly weapon on the streets. If it helps, think of your gun like a baby: There’s no law that prevents idiots from having a baby, but there is a law penalizing them for knowingly losing one. And way less people have been shot and killed by lost babies than lost guns. To reiterate, no one here is arguing a person’s right to own a gun. Gun ownership is protected by law, and I’ll support it until the day I die, which hopefully isn’t soon via gunshot.
There are some people out there, like Jesus, who say that owning a gun is wrong. Maybe if these crybabies weren’t so busy growing out their hair and hugging trees and “living their lives according to the Bible,” they’d have time to read the Second Amendment for once. The fact is, gun owners have a right to bear arms. And the only way they can get the bear arms off the bear’s body is by shooting it with their guns.
In summation, everyone on Earth can and should have a gun. That way, if anyone ever shoots you, you can shoot them back, and they can shoot you back, and all of your friends and your dog and your grandma can join in and everyone can run around shooting everyone else all the time, just like the Constitution says. God bless America.
