Festival report: Emmaboda Festival 05
The path to get here was long and hard. I hard originally planned to come with a good friend who pulled out. However, his subsequent cancellation made me all the more determined to make it out here. The Emmaboda Festival looked appealing as 90% of the bands on the bill had never played the UK before, plus there was a cheap(ish) hotel within a 20 minute walk of the site.
The first day of the festival opened with Band Of Joy. They're one of those groups that do exactly what it says on the tin. Instrumental gypsy party in this case. All sorts of crazy dancing ensued from stylish characters. These included one guy who wore a matching outfit of an incredibly light shade of pink, and another guy who dressed up in a full suit who danced like Elvis in his prime. After that it was off to the smaller stage to see Gaddan & Braxen. The group makes what Swedes call "Nintendo music." It's fairly inoffensive and there are a lot of bands who do that kind of thing better, notably Slagsmalsklubben who played on Friday. Slagsmalsklubben are lead by a chic geek with a curly afro and huge glasses. He dances incessantly, and the crowd are only too happy to mimmick him. SMK took me back to the early 90s and reminded me of a whole lot of forgotten euro pop bands who used to grace MTV's European Top Twenty.
Another of the best bands on the Friday were Lovekevins. To my knowledge this Swedish band are still unsigned. They came across like a slightly more shambolic version of the Lucksmiths, with beautiful songwriting at the core of their sound. They were shortly followed by the all female Rough Bunnies who are a modern take on Beat Happening. Apparently, they are also unsigned. After hearing so much it was greatly to finally get a chance to see the Detroit-based Saturday Looks Good To Me, who were a bluesier take on Motown. Interestingly, the band are relatively unknown outside of Scandinavia. I was annoyed to miss Springfactory, who I later found out feature a member of Suburban Kids With Biblical Names.
The final day started with Three Is A Crowd (TIAC). I must say that this band were a bit of a disappointment. They do that indie/dance crossover thing. "We fucked up" is a gem, but the rest of the set didn't live up to this song. Still, full marks for the matching brown tracksuit tops. Mixtapes & Cellmates are like a slightly more lo-fi version of Radio Dept. The drum machine sounded great. Not sure if these guys are signed. If so, surely this can't be the case for much longer? Over on the main stage Frida Hyvönen was a little disappointing. As good as she was, her songs lacked variation. Her lyrics and style are a bit kooky. I guess she's the closest Sweden has to Kate Bush. Jens Lekman gave one of the best performances of the festival. It's quite amusing that his whole band is made up of female members. The selection of songs he played was reasonably obscure, taking in just a handful of the tracks from "When I said I wanted to be your dog", a few songs from his EPs, and a couple I hadn't heard before. It's a mystery to me why he isn't better known in the UK.
The quality of the artists booked at Emmaboda is a testament to the promoters and organisers. Shortly after arriving at the festival, it soon became obvious that most of the crowd had only heard of a handful of the artists playing. For example, take the Pipettes, the only UK artists who played. The band had never played outside of the UK previously, yet the promoters had the foresight to predict that they would go down a storm. They weren't wrong, and in fact The Pipettes gave one of the best received performances of the entire festival. Surely their twee take on Motown and polka dot dresses is now destined to take the rest of Sweden by storm.
One of the reasons I wanted to come out to Emmaboda in the first place is that Sweden is great at predicting musical trends. Whilst it is only in the last year or so that England and America has started to "get" synth pop, the genre has been huge in Sweden for a good few years, with Weeping Willows and Melody Club serving as just two examples. If pushed to predict the next musical trend to emerge from Sweden, I'd suggest indie pop. Whilst this genre is not new at all, it has been out of vogue for quite some time in the UK. However, in Sweden the success of the entire roster of Labrador Records (including the excellent South Ambulance who played on Saturday) suggests that the tide might be about to change. This is given greater weight when you consider that The Boy Least Likely To (a relatively small UK indie pop band with one self-released album to their name) have already been booked to play a handful of club dates in Sweden, whilst the Pipettes are booked to return in November. Roll on next year…
- Nick Levine