Interview: Sugarplum Fairy
After their show in Berlin, the final date on their European tour, Sugarplum Fairy's Carl Norén, Victor Norén, and Kristian Gidlund talked about the band's past, future, and metaphysical present. They explained why Stockholm musicians are too afraid to start rock bands, they claimed Sweden doesn't have a unique sound, and they discredited those who advocate regular employment. Sure, they're barely in their 20s, but they're also somehow self-aware enough to key in on the impulsiveness of it all.
- Roni Brunn
RB: How did you get started?
VN: We started in 1998, in our home town.
RB: You were zero years old at that time.
VN: No, minus ten. I was actually twelve. Me and my brother Carl met Kristian, the drummer boy. He and Carl ended up in the same class after we switched schools. I was hanging around with them, and we found out he had a drum kit, which was very unique for a fifteen year old. We always wanted to make music, and when you have the drums, then you can start a band.
RB: Are there any other musical people in your family?
CN: We have a sister who plays the trumpet [laughs.] Our cousin is a great rapper.
VN: He is the most amazing rapper. The best rapper in Sweden.
CN: He's called Prop Dylan, it's his artist name, like Bob Dylan, and his best friend plays in the band.
RB: How did Sugarplum Fairy come to be about as it is today?
VN: Jonas, the lead guitarist, was in the same school as well. We met him, and we became friends. He didn't play the guitar at the time, so I had to teach him.
RB: Did you teach other people? You have a really good track record.
VN: Carl taught David, the bass and keyboard player and taught me guitar and keyboards. We're like a music school. We were all in the same gang, so it was natural that we came together as a band.
RB: The term "sugarplum fairy" used to be slang for drug dealer in the 60s.
VN: We didn't know that it was 60s slang. We were trying to find a band name, and we were listening quite a lot to the Beatles' Anthology Volume II, which was out at the time. Then we just wondered, "well, Lennon said something on this track, 'A Day in the Life,' what is it?" We checked it out -- he said "sugarplum fairy," and we thought it's a good name for a band. We didn't know what it meant; the only thing was that Lennon said it.
RB: You like the Beatles. What other bands do you listen to?
VN: We listen to the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Oasis. We grew up with Oasis, because they were the biggest when we started the band.
CN: We listen to a lot of music. We're very good at listening to music.
RB: What do you listen to now?
CN: At the moment, I listen a lot to Nick Drake, and Kristian listens to a lot of Otis Redding. We are kind of electric, so we try to play acoustic songs and stuff like that.
RB: Do you listen to anything current?
CN: There are a lot of good bands from Sweden -- like the Shout out Louds -- that we like.
VN: I like the Thrills and the Coral.
RB: What are the differences among the Swedish, British, and American sounds?
CN: I think the lyrics are the biggest, and the accent. You feel, in American music, there are more roots, so you can hear the blues background. And the current American pop, or the punk, what you call it, usually sounds like Blink 182. We don't like that so much. But British music seems to keep the rock, pop, or Beatles tradition with more melodies.
VN: Swedish bands often decide, "do we want to sound American or do we want to sound British?" So it's not like there is a unique sound for Sweden. Of course, there's something in common because we come from the same place, and we have the same culture and roots, but when people form a band, they tend to listen to American and British music, because it's a big part of Swedish musical culture as well.
KG: When Brit pop was the biggest, there was a wave of Swedish bands that sounded British. Brainpool was a band from Sweden with a very British sound.
VN: I don't think we quite realized that they were from Sweden.
KG: We compared them to Oasis, and we thought they were really good.
RB: Do you think kids in Sweden listen to your music and not know where you're from?
KG: Maybe. We thought that about Brainpool.
VN: We were really young when we started listening to music. We were nine and ten. I think most kids start to listen to music when they are twelve, thirteen.
CN: Otherwise, they listen to Crazy Frog.
KG: Maybe that phenomenon would be more common here in Germany, that people would guess we were a British band.
RB: What sort of reaction do you get from people about being from Sweden?
KG: Swedish music is really big here in Germany. Everyone talks about Swedish bands. It's an advantage.
CN: We have a good indie scene in Sweden.
RB: Are you part of a scene back home? More bands coming from Borlänge?
CN: No, there aren't. There are a lot of bands coming from the big cities now, like Göteborg, Stockholm, Malmö. Not so many bands coming from small cities like Borlänge, and usually it's rock bands coming from the small cities, and more arty and pop-y bands from big cities.
RB: Why do you think that is?
CN: There are so many influences living in a big city, you get another personality in the music. It's more raw when you're coming from a small town. You tend to play rock 'n' roll. There's a great feeling from rock 'n' roll, so impulsive, I think.
RB: Are you still living there?
CN: No, I moved to Stockholm about a year ago. [Laughs] I'm becoming more arty and pop-y. Victor lives in Stockholm as well, so the next album is gonna be less rock.
RB: What's the Stockholm influence?
VN: When you play music in a small town, you isolate yourself, and the trends in Stockholm don't affect you at all. So when you come to play your first gig in Stockholm -- and is almost impossible to get your foot in the Stockholm scene -- then you realize you're the kings of rock in town because all the musicians there are too afraid to start a rock band.
CN: If they did, they'd disappear in some way. Our opening band, the Monotypes, is from Stockholm, and they play rock. You don't hear about them that much in Sweden, but they're more of a thing in Europe. That's something for a lot of rock bands in Sweden. They're traveling the world, like the Hives, Mando Diao, Sugarplum Fairy, and the Monotypes, but in Sweden, they don't play as much.
RB: Why is that?
CN: We are just spoiled with music in Sweden. You have a lot to listen to, and a lot of bands that sing in Swedish and do this kind of strange pop thing, like very happy pop. Those bands take up the scene in a way. So the rock bands that sing in English have to and want to go out.
RB: How are audiences different? Are people too cool for school in Sweden?
VN: Yeah, I think so. If you can play in a small city, and you get "rockers," or in swedish "raggare," it's like 50s guys who drive around in cars and drink home-brewed liquor. They're in the rock concert scene, and they heckle.
RB: Did you re-recorded the album for Germany?
VN: Not re-record, we did a new mix and we did a couple of new songs.
RB: How did that come about?
VN: They wanted new songs. They didn't want for the people in Germany to just buy the swedish album, they wanted something special.
CN: We felt like the live feeling disappeared in the Swedish version because it was kind of slick and more pop. We wanted some more rock, so we added a few guitars to the recording.
VN: I think it's great, because there aren't a lot of bands who do that. Back in the 60s, they did new stuff for different countries, and that was great. We did the same thing for Japan, and I would love to do that again. You can re-experience the entire thing again. It's nice to refresh the sound, make it more up-to-date. A record is not like the Holy Bible; you can change it.
RB: Have you guys been to San Jose?
VN: In our minds. The only thing we know about San Jose is the hockey team, the San Jose Sharks.
CN: But it's a girl who says that she's going to San Jose. We didn't go there.
VN: She's going to San Jose to watch the San Jose Sharks versus the New York Rangers.
CN: She's running away.
RB: Are you into hockey?
CN: Swedish hockey is really good.
VN: But we're more into soccer. It's called football.
RB: What other stuff do you do when you have time off?
VN: Nothing really, because you do so much when you're on tour. You try to be as normal as possible.
RB: What does normal mean?
VN: Doing nothing. Most people do nothing in their spare time. They just sit on the sofa.
CN: It's hard when you're in a band to pick up when you have spare time. When you're a song writer, you're always creative, trying to come up with new stuff, playing the piano, the guitar. Spare time and work, if you wanna call it work, they're kind of the same thing. It's our hobby to write music and play music, so that's what we do in our spare time, if you wanna call it spare time.
VN: It's the best job in the world, do what you wanna do all the time.
RB: Is it what you expected it to be?
CN: Much better.
VN: In a perfect world, in your own mind, you just do the things you want to do all the time. And that life is great. Most people say you should work as well, and that's a lie.
CN: The good thing with this is that you're always getting pushed to do better. Everything is moving all the time. You don't have an 8-4 job. You do the same thing every day, then you come home, and the job is maybe not your life, it's something you have to do for money. But when you do this, you have to improve yourself all the time to become bigger and become better, and to keep it interesting and fun.
RB: What pushes you to do that?
CN: If we just maintain the status quo, everything would be grey and boring because it's such a fast life to live. When you're on the road and you play the same songs all the time, you want to have new material and more people in your concerts, you wanna have more people buying because you can do a better product next time, put more money in it. You want to impress girls maybe. You want to try to beat yourself --
VN: You want to beat yourself up.
CN: -- try to beat yourself in song writing and try to make feelings come to songs. We have been writing songs since we were fourteen years old, but we don't know how to write songs, they just come to us. When I'm old, I want to know how to write a song.
RB: You feel like you don't know how to write songs?
CN: No, but I can write songs. I don't know how to write songs. If you knew how to write a song, you can do like 200 a day, because then it's just [snaps his fingers.] Now songs come like chemistry in your brain, and then you have a song and you don't know how it got there. You just picked up the guitar, and the songs come. That's interesting. Some day, we maybe know how to write songs and we could explain it to someone. It's easier to learn how to play the guitar than to learn how to write a song.
RB: What's in the future for Sugarplum Fairy?
VN: I think this is the last tour for this album. We are recording the next album later this year. We'll release it in like April, maybe.
.:About the author:
Designer/musician Roni Brunn dreams of Stockholm while residing in Los Angeles, where she runs a math club. Of course.