Interview: Niklas Angergård (Acid House Kings)
Chances are, you've already come across at least a few glowing -- and apt -- reviews Acid House Kings garnered for their latest album, "Sing along with Acid House Kings". You know all about its nuanced layers, precise performances, and literate lyrics. So here's a change of pace -- check out the spontaneous, humble wit with which AHK's Niklas Angergård approaches perfectly ordinary questions.
- Roni Brunn
Scrolling bonus: Acid House Kings top 10 guide to good music
RB: Why did you choose to release a karaoke DVD with this album?
NA: The main thing is it goes with the album. We came up with the idea and we could do it, so why not?
RB: Do you do karaoke?
NA: No [laughs].
RB: Does anyone in the band do karaoke?
NA: No. I think I'm the only one who tested it once on a boat to Finland. That's really lowlife culture. So two friends and I did "Dancing queen" by ABBA. It's really something you look down on in Sweden.
RB: Why?
NA: I'm not sure, I guess it could be some way of hanging out with your friends, but only really tacky places have karaoke. The film "Lost In Translation" probably made the karaoke thing a bit trendier than it used to be.
RB: How did you get the idea to do it?
NA: We began thinking of titles for the album, and we had loads of different ones. Some of them were pretentious, and "Sing along with the Acid House Kings" was one of the less pretentious ones. We discussed it, and we thought we made quite sing-along-able tunes. So we decided to make the DVD. And no one had ever come across anyone who had done that before. Making the world's first karaoke DVD accompanying an album was one of the main reasons I would say. Being the first with something [laughs].
RB: What kind of reaction have you gotten to it?
NA: I think people are generally very positive. It's nice, in a culture where a lot of music listening is through downloads, you already have the MP3 sort of songs, I think people like that you do something extra when you release an album. And a karaoke DVD is at least something extra.
RB: Your music doesn't shy away from strong melody, which makes it universal. At the same time, someone might say that the pop roots are really Swedish. How do you account for that?
NA: I'm gonna guess it's a lot harder to see something as typically Swedish when you're from Sweden, in a way. We're not trying to do something very Swedish; we just are really melody focused. We don't record anything that we don't think has a really strong melody, because then it's not worth pursuing further. So I think that may be a typical Swedish thing maybe, like ABBA and, I don't know, Ace of Base. Weren't they big in the U.S. as well? [Laughs] Not very good, maybe. But they were at least melody focused. For sure. The Cardigans maybe as well. Also newer things like the Hives or Soundtrack of Our Lives have some sort of basic melodies. I think we see ourselves as more universal.
RB: How are you planning to tour this album?
NA: Generally, we are touring very little.
RB: Why is that?
NA: Well, we're a studio product, like boy bands.
RB: So you're really good dancers.
NA: Exactly. And you see that on the very rare occasions we perform live. But seriously, before this album, we had maybe played 15 times during 15 years, something like that. And it changed slightly, I think we played maybe 10 times in Sweden, played the two biggest festivals, Hultsfred and Arvikafestivalen. We were almost surprised by the response on the big festivals. We've never experienced that. But we were almost popular, I would say [laughs]. We played twice in Spain as well. And we recently got an invitation to play in Hong Kong.
RB: Did you enjoy playing live?
NA: Absolutely. We like it a lot. It's just that we're very meticulous when recording. We work a lot with the arrangements, harmonies, and structures of the songs. To create the exact same thing live, we need 20 people. But we are four, plus one or two extras live, so it's a different thing. We had this semi-poor analogy: it's like making a really big movie with lots of money, lots of time, and famous actors. And then you choose not to let people see the movie, but rather put it up on some kind of local amateur theater. I think we can be enjoyable live, but it's something different than the studio thing, and we see the record as the main output.
RB: When you formed the band, is that how you saw it, that that's what it was gonna be?
NA: We've always seen the record as the main thing, absolutely. But we played a lot this year, for us, and we enjoyed that, too. We played the simpler, easier, more catchy songs live and chose not to play the subtle ones. Then it works fine.
RB: How did you form the band? You're playing with your brother, how's that going?
NA: That's not very strange, I think. It was me, my brother, and a friend of his and mine. We were really into the same type of music. And we tried, if we could, to make something similar.
RB: What type of music were you into?
NA: Generally, pop, in the very broad sense. A lot into Sarah Records and Creation Records. Very English niche pop bands, like the Orchids, Field Mice and Felt. But also 60s pop like Dusty Springfield and The Supremes and of course The Smiths. Our father has around 1,000 Elvis Presley records, so that was our childhood taste. Still love songs like "Any day now," "Kentucky rain" and "Suspicious minds".
RB: Has that taste evolved?
NA: Absolutely. I think all of us got much broader tastes now. We all have more or less all the Sarah Records singles, one to 100. They all sound the same, and after a while, you get tired of that, so we listen to a lot of other stuff. I've been listening to the new Vashti Bunyan record, by the folk singer girl who's made one cult record in the '60s, I think, maybe '70s. And then she's just recorded a new one, very subtle, very good called "Lookaftering". Another one is Antony & The Johnsons. We wouldn't have listened to it 15 years ago. But our taste is broader, at least.
RB: Why do you think that is?
NA: You change as a person more or less. And your musical taste changes a bit, with that I think. We were into a small niche, the Sarah Records pop. There aren't any more records within that niche, more or less, not very good ones at least.
RB: How is writing songs writing now that you've been a musician for a while compared to how it was when you were starting out, being unknown?
NA: We see ourselves as fairly unknown. I think the first real recordings we did were released. We have never been a band rehearsing in a dark cellar, so we don't know really what that's like. We sent the first two songs to one label only, a small one I came across when I was in Hamburg called Marsh-Marigold. And then he wanted to release it. I actually recently met Oliver Goetzl, who is the founder of the Marsh-Marigold Record Label. He passed by Stockholm last week. I haven't seen him in maybe seven years. He is making documentary films on wolverines and bears in Finland.
RB: Of course.
NA: Of course. Why shouldn't he?
RB: When you started out, you had a 10 year plan, is that right?
NA: Yeah. We were impressed with the Felt, an English band that released 10 albums in 10 years during the 80s. We thought that was a really cool way of summarizing yourself. But we don't have that productivity, so we have released one album every fifth year. Three albums in ten years. And now with "Sing," it was only three years since the last album. So it's a new record for us.
RB: How did that happen?
NA: I think we were a bit inspired, actually, after "Mondays". We were really happy with that, and I think it got a little wider audience around the world. And it received good reviews in some interesting places. I think that inspired us to work a little faster. But still, at three years, it's still not a high speed project.
RB: Is expanding the audience something you think about? Or marketing?
NA: We want as big an audience as we can have. We have no problem with people liking what we do, which makes us want to get involved. We do everything around like the artwork, and we keep control of that. We have an art director, but we have tight control over how we want it to look and so on.
RB: Has it been that way since the start?
NA: Yeah, on the first EP and the first album, we did everything ourselves. And I don't think we had the skills to do that, so they're not as good looking as the last three albums covers. I really like the new ones.
RB: How do you see your audience?
NA: We don't see it, [laughs] so we don't know.
RB: Who do you sing to?
NA: We don't sing for anyone but ourselves, I think. It's as simple as that. That's how we work: when we are happy with the record, it's released. And if it takes five years, okay, fair enough. If it takes three years, that's also good. Given that we don't play live a lot, especially outside Sweden, we don't get to meet our audience. We get nice emails from all over the world. But you don't really know who they are, only know that they like what we do. It's really hard.
RB: Are you curious about it?
NA: Yeah, absolutely. I'm really into reading reviews of our music, having someone else analyzing what you do. I think that's really interesting to see how people get different things out of your music. And the reviews for this album -- I think I could have written them in the same way. I know that they're saying the same things that we intend to, which we like. Most of them, at least.
RB: How would you perceive it?
NA: First of all, we're very melody focused. And then we work very meticulously. We work on each song until we think it's perfect. We mixed one song like 25 times.
RB: What song is that?
NA: "A Long Term Plan". It was almost left off the album. And, hopefully, a lot of people see that quality in the music -- that it's quite well done. The drawback of being very catchy or sing-a-long friendly, in fact, is that the music could be perceived as quite shallow. Several of the reviews have seen something under the surface, which we also appreciate. Because we don't see ourselves that way. It's not a super happy summer album, when it comes to the lyrics. And it's nice that people see through the somewhat glittering surface. I like that people also take the time to analyze the music and the lyrics. Given that they do that, I think we have succeeded with something, like drawing people into something, not just something you have in the background. But making something that can be analyzed.
RB: Is that how you approach art in general?
NA: I haven't thought about that, but I like art that can be easily absorbed and is one thing when you first encounter it, but then it has something extra to it that you can analyze.
RB: Do you read reviews for other music? Does that interest you or you just kind of wanna keep up?
NA: Yeah. I look for music, so that's one way of finding it.
RB: What is it about your music that makes you happy?
NA: I think it could be anything, actually: a nice harmony, or a nice guitar figure, or a part of the lyrics or everything taken together. The feeling that you have when you recorded something, and then you take it home and listen to it 60 times maybe. That's the joy of making music, I think. Making something that makes you a bit proud of yourself.
RB: Since your process is very meticulous, are there surprises still when you listen to it or do you know every little nuance?
NA: I think our songs are quite like full of small things, so, actually, there could be a moment, especially when you listen to the music in headphones, you get, "oh, we did that." So, yeah, you could be surprised, even though we have listened to each song like 200 times before it's released. So the big surprises are not there, I guess.
RB: What are you working on now?
NA: We haven't started recording anything new actually. So we're writing songs.
RB: What's your process for writing songs?
NA: It's a bit different. It's basically me and Johan. I do it at home on the guitar. And then, when I have a full song with each section and lyrics for everything, I take it to the studio. That's my way of doing it, and Johan goes to the studio, sits down and begins working with something. And then he goes home with the song, later in the evening.
RB: Do you ever write songs together?
NA: We don't sit down next to each other and write them, but in many instances, on the new album, I have done a verse, and he's done the chorus or the other way around. We connect different parts, which we have written separately.
RB: Do you set out to match up the lyrics to have one theme, or do they coincide?
NA: If we mix different parts together, we usually rewrite the lyrics so they work all the way through. Because otherwise, it could be very strange, I guess. It's very rare that we do something together in the studio.
RB: How do you trace your sound's evolution?
NA: We usually say to ourselves that we sound the same, just that we've gotten a bit better at what we're doing.
RB: Better in what sense?
NA: Better songs, better production, better lyrics and I think other people would say that maybe we have a broader appeal in the sound now. You could play it in the background at a dinner at your parents' house, and the guests wouldn't mind. And on the initial albums, they could have minded. I think. It sounded too indie.
RB: Is that something you think about: under what circumstances might the songs be listened to?
NA: No, [laughs] no, we don't.
RB: What are your goals now?
NA: Well, make a fifth album. [Laughs] It'll come out in 2010 maybe. First of all, I hope the newest release will get some attention, and that people sing along and like the record. But music-wise, we will begin working and start collecting songs and slowly begin recording them. But when it's finished, it's finished. More or less. The only objective for us is to make a better album than the last one. And I think so far we've succeeded at that.
Acid House Kings top 10 guide to good music:
The Smiths "The cowbell-click track" [unreleased instrumental]
Vashti Bunyan "Here before" [song]
Cat Power "The greatest" [MP3]
Suburban Kids With Biblical Names "#3" [album]
The Clientele "St Paul's beneath a sinking sky" [demo]
Don Lennon "Routine" [album]
Loveninjas "Keep your love" [EP]
Sufjan Stevens "Concerning the UFO sighting near Highland, Illinois" [song]
Richard Hawley "Cole's corner" [album]
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "Over and over again (lost and found)" [song]
.:About the author:
Designer/musician Roni Brunn dreams of Stockholm while residing in Los Angeles, where she runs a math club. Of course.