Interview: Tor Helmstein (Loveninjas)
Tor Helmstein writes lyrics about death and sex -- with a manga slant, no less -- and he crafts them in arrangements that honor the indie pop genre with hooks, grit, and balance. It takes someone with deft talents to make this concept compelling and lend legitimacy to the first four letters in its name, Loveninjas. Though it's unlikely that these elements would survive the fusion, Helmstein surpasses that benchmark while injecting yet another piece that's not entirely prevalent in indie pop -- fun..
- Roni Brunn
RB: How did you get started with Loveninjas?
TH: I basically started writing songs after this very emotional period. My dad died, and I started writing a lot of songs, most of them were really shitty. [Laughs] Because, you know, when you get emotional and basically when you write songs about love and stuff like that, it gets sort of corny. So most of the early songs were really bad. And then I read the book "Shogun," and I got really into Japan. I was just sitting with my piano, and I wrote this song called "Sweet Geisha Love," and it's sort of like set the tone for a new concept. And I thought, "hey, why not start a ninja band?" But a ninja is basically a bad guy. So I thought that we should be nice ninjas who spread the message in love and blah, blah, blah, etcetera.
RB: What does it mean to be a good ninja?
TH: Instead of killing the good guys, a Loveninja kills the bad guys, who are ninjas, amazingly. And when we're not out killing people, we just walk around like ordinary people. Empathy is a big part of it. We're not religious or anything like that. We're somewhere in between good and bad. We just wanna have as much fun as possible and as much sex as possible. And then die.
RB: How did you get together with your band mates?
TH: Everybody in the band, except for Dennis, the guitarist, is from the same town. Anders and I had played in another band before. And I lived with Olle. So I just didn't have any other options. I decided that if he could wear the heart, he'll just look good and it doesn't really matter what he plays.
RB: Did he know how to play the keyboard before?
TH: No, I, I taught him to play. I said that the good thing is that you'll be in a pop band and you'll get to meet chicks and stuff. But the bad thing is that you'll have to be in this papier mache heart. But, actually, everybody loves the heart. Sometimes it's even good because even though I'm comfortable with being the front of the band, it's still nice to have a guy who's taking a bit of the load.
RB: How did you make the heart?
TH: I made it with Olle's mother. We used chicken wire and covered it with newspapers in wallpaper glue. Then we painted it. So, actually on some parts of the heart, you can read what it says on the newspaper. [Laughs] If you're bored and on tour, you can read him, the heart.
RB: Is the heart heavy?
TH: No. It's really light. We thought it had to be something mobile, and it would still have to be able to take a lot of hits and stuff like that from touring. It's definitely getting worn down.
RB: Does Olle like all the attention?
TH: That's the fun part about Olle. He's the sort of guy who doesn't really like attention. He's the most mature guy in the band, even though he's the youngest. At first, we thought that it would be hard to be the guy in the heart. And everybody would think that he was a geek and heckle him. But we've gotten a hundred percent positive reactions on the heart. So he's getting the chicks, which is all right with me because, you know, I have a girlfriend. And I don't really care about it. So it's good for him.
RB: Now that you have a band together, do you think you'll co-write with people in the band?
TH: No. I've been in bands before, and this is more like my solo project. The guys are as much part of the band as I am, but I write all the music and I record everything. I play all the instruments right now. In the future, they will probably play on the records.
RB: What's your experience been like with previous bands?
TH: When you bring a song to a band, if everybody has to have a say, there's no song anymore. Everything changes, everything has to change. So that's why I wanna do it on my own. My creative process is too sensitive, at least, this is what I think, to be disturbed by other people. I need a lot of time on my own then. So I don't think Loveninjas is ever going to feature songs from other members or anybody else but me, unless we do a cover. But they're okay with that. If they would ever write really good songs, I'd say, "hey, start your own band and do whatever you like." In my previous bands, they didn't want me to have a lot of side projects. They were really upset with me going to Germany with The Legends. In Loveninjas, everybody is free to do what they want, but at the same time, they don't really leave the band. When we rehearse for the live show, they have more of a say. So we're more like a band.
RB: Are there songs you wanna cover?
TH: Yes. Recently, because of my girlfriend, [laughs] I haven't been writing much. I work in the studio every day because I don't have a regular job. I want to record a finished song every week. Now, it's been like two months since my last song. So I thought, "all right, if I can't write a song, I could, at least, record someone else's song, just for a kick." So I started recording a Loveninjas version of Joanna Newsom's "Peach Plum Pear." We might just make a download, a little song or something like that, just for kicks. It's very minimalistic when she does it. I've added some drums, some bass and my vocals, of course. So it's a bit different. She has a really high pitched voice, and my voice is more of a whisper.
RB: What's in the future now for Loveninjas?
TH: Hopefully, if this first single, does well and people like it, we'll do another single on Labrador, and then the album should be out next year. The working title is "Loveninjas: The Early Years." [Laughs] I think it's fun to make the first album a compilation without ever releasing anything else before.
RB: What are your plans for touring with The Legends?
TH: We did a combined tour together with The Legends, and it was great. And in November, after the release, we're gonna do a couple of shows. Then we're gonna go on tour in December together with Pelle Carlberg, former Edson. In January, we're going to Germany to do shows with The Legends. We just wanna do as many support gigs as possible, so we can just reach as many people as possible. People have been really enthusiastic. I don't know if it was the music or the costumes. But maybe a combination. And that's what's good about the concept; there's something for everybody. Even if people don't like the music, the heart is funny to watch.
RB: What do you think about being grouped together with Swedish indie pop?
TH: Well, I think it's true. Even though it doesn't matter how much I would try to evolve in any direction, it would still be Swedish music. Everybody knows that Swedish pop is good. I'm not saying that I'm part of it; I'm definitely trailing. Or, at least, I hope so. And I want to be a part of it. I'm not into traditions and stuff. But we have a good songwriting tradition in Sweden, and we have everything from rock sets to ABBA. Then we have so many good indie acts, as well. And no matter how a Swedish band sounds, it will always be compared to the big Swedish bands.
RB: Do you compare it yourself, or is it just something you accept?
TH: I think it's just something I'll have to accept. When I write, I just try to get the melodies as nice as possible. And then try to build a song from that. This morning I had a really nice experience. I dreamt this melody, sort of like when Paul McCartney wrote "Yesterday." I'm not staying that it's gonna be a good song. But I had this melody in my head when I woke up and I went to the guitar and I tried to sing it and find the chords. Then I recorded it with my cell phone. Tomorrow, I'm gonna write some lyrics, at least temporary ones, and I'm gonna record it. That's the way I do it: first the melody, then the chords, and then the lyrics. I think the melody and beats are the most important things. [Note: the song is now finished and is called "Earl Grey With Honey."]
RB: What do you think about Loveninjas being called a concept band?
TH: I think it's good. We don't wanna be just another band. And I mean I'm not saying that we wanna be different and cool and stuff like that. But we just do a lot of things. And I wanna be able to incorporate them into Loveninjas. In the future, I wanna be able to design clothes like J. Lo.
RB: What other things do you wanna incorporate?
TH: Comic strips. We wanna have a new comic strip on the website every month. And then, have you heard of a television show called "Star Zinger?" It's a Japanese series edited out of a long Japanese animated movies. They cut it in pieces and translated it into Swedish. It's really, really good. I like the characters that are featured; there's one fat guy, and there's one thin guy, he's tall. They have different weapons and, I wanna do something like that with Loveninjas. I wanna do a lot of things. Olle and I started a DJ team. Maybe some more claymation as well. And then after about three records and a moustache, I wanna finish it.
RB: What music do you play when you DJ?
TH: Oh, dear. Actually the fun thing is that Olle's been trying to teach me about indie pop, ever since we moved into together. And so I think all the musical influences I have, I've gotten them from Olle. It's a very nice friendship. He also reviews all my songs before I give them to the record company. I think we'd love to play songs by Field Mice, especially "Emma's House". And my favorite band, EPO-555. Sometimes we throw in Joanna Newsom, New Order, and Magnetic Fields. We wanna play songs that we just love. It doesn't have to fit in with Loveninjas influences or anything like that.
RB: What other interests do you have besides music?
TH: I should say sex, but that's a bit weird. I like to do claymation. My cousin and I recently got our first paid job to do a claymation video for a, for a band. We did a claymation of them playing hockey. We made the ice polishing machine out of cardboard. The figures are about a decimeter high. How much is that in inches? Three, four inches. It's really fun. The band projects it the big screen behind them on stage. The first movie we did was called "The Finger." It's very childish and very nasty. It's about a guy who puts his finger up another guy's ass. We've made a movie about Santa, when he was drunk and puking. We did a "Star Wars" movie as well. We're working on projects all the time. In the first Loveninjas video, we had a short clip of claymation as well. I got this idea about making a series of 10 minute episodes of claymation with, with a space theme, about, well, it's a cliché, but it's a guy's girlfriend has been kidnapped. [laughs] He's trying to find her, and he has this map to a space station. I wanna make 10 episodes, and every episode would have feature a Labrador band. So you can only do so much, but we'll see what happens.
RB: What are your influences musically?
TH: Olle introduced me to Labrador, the label. And the first band that I started loving was The Legends. And now I [laughs] play with them. I haven't really been listening to indie pop for a long time. I started writing songs a year ago, or writing in this way that I'm writing. I mean, I've been writing for a long time, but I think I reached a new level of writing. I'm not saying that I'm writing good songs, but there was a lot of crap before, [laughs] and now it's better. I'd like to be able to reach another level again, so that I can write even better songs. But I think, lately, I've been listening to lots of New Order and Joy Division and more synthesized music. But my favorite band, at the moment, is a bunch of guys from Denmark called EPO-555. They're like a little bit like the Jesus and Mary Chain with electronic beats. And really cool, nice melodies and, then it's really a bit dark sometimes. I tend to like music that combines what's sweet and happy with sad messages, like the single, "Keep Your Love," it's a happy song, but the message is "fuck off." EPO-555 has the same type of thing, but their music is much darker, and I wanna write dirty music. I don't mean dirty like in the sexual sense. I want it to sound dirty. I wanna use a lot of noises. You won't hear that in the first single, but I wanna do it in the future. I work a lot with noises on my demos. And then when I give it to Johan [of Labrador Records], he brushes it up.
RB: What sort of noises?
TH: Indie pop is always, almost always dirty sounding. I mean, the sound quality is never really that good. I just bought a new synthesizer, and I'm trying to work with distorted organs and violins, and I try to distort the sound as much as possible.
RB: What do you like about combining happy music and dark lyrics?
TH: I'm sort of into death and sex. Who isn't into sex? The first song describes it so well -- "Sweet Geisha Love" is about a female assassin that's gonna kill a guy, and it turns out that they're old lovers. And he says, "all right, you can kill me, but let's fuck first." So basically the story is that they have sex, and then she kills him. I wouldn't say that I'm obsessed with death. But I think it's a big part of our lives and I wanna write and hear about it. It's not like I wanna die; I value my life. But I think I'm ready for it whenever it comes. At least I try to be. Well, every time I fly, I'm like, "all right, Daddy, here I come."
RB: Are you approaching it from an intellectual perspective or an emotional, personal perspective?
TH: To be honest with you, I don't think I'm that smart. Actually, it's this thing about music. When you start playing a lot of music, you become stupid. It's true, it's true. This has been tested over and over again. You get happy, but you get stupid as well. And I wrote a lot better lyrics before, but the music was really bad. So now I'm more into making it sound good than making the messages mean something. But still you can't just write anything. Like the, the new James Blunt. In the song "You're Beautiful," the lyrics go, "I saw you face in a crowded place," stuff like that. And I just wanna puke. But sometimes I wanna keep it simple, just because I can. And I don't wanna go too deep because I think I can do that some other time. And sometimes, well, I just wanna explore lyrically what I can do. Loveninjas is pretty shallow. It's basically just pretty straightforward, let's have sex and kill each other. But maybe some day I'll learn to write better lyrics. I hope so.
RB: What are your influences, comedy-wise?
TH: I think Jonathan Richman writes really good lyrics, and, when it comes to pop music, I think Hidden Cameras write about dirty things as well. I like "The Simpsons" and "South Park," but I can't really think of anything that's influenced my sexually inspired dark humor. Maybe life itself. I mean, everything's so fucked up, and everything's so dark.
RB: What's the idea behind the gay element in your lyrics?
TH: Even though I'm not gay, I wanna be able to reach people. I don't wanna just write songs about heterosexual relationships; I wanna write about gay love. I'm not saying that I wanna be a gay icon or anything like that, but, still, I wanna be able, I want everybody to be able to identify with the lyrics. I think that even though I'm not gay, I should be allowed to be write about anything. The song, "She Broke his Penis in Two" is sort of like an homage to that.
RB: Are you part of the gay community?
TH: No, I don't even have any gay friends. Or maybe I do. You never know. I'm sort of like fascinated. I don't wanna be different or anything like that. I don't wish I was almost gay or anything like that. I'm sort of fascinated by the way the people react to gays. I wrote "Keep Your Love," and it's about a girl who likes a guy, but he doesn't like her. The guy says, "can't you see that I'm gay?" And even though it doesn't actually mean that he's gay, my old producer said, "we can't have this text. You have to edit that out." And I was like, "no way. I'm not not changing the lyrics." I would be really honored if I could write a song that would be liked by gay people. I mean, I don't wanna please them or anything like that. I just want to reach out to everybody. I don't wanna be limited.
RB: How do people react to the sex in your lyrics?
TH: I think that it's related to the gay thing. A lot of people react strangely when they read the lyrics that are both about death and sex, at the same time. A friend of mine in America said that this will never work there because it's too explicit, but I don't think it's bad or bold. What he said just makes me wanna write even more. I don't wanna provoke or anything like that. I don't care. I just wanna do what I feel like. And if I wanna write about sex, that's what I'll write. It's good inspiration, as well. When I first started writing for Loveninjas, I put myself in this box of just sex and death: I could only write songs about sex and death. If you limit yourself, it sometimes makes it harder to write, but sometimes it also makes it easier to write.
.:About the author:
Designer/musician Roni Brunn dreams of Stockholm while residing in Los Angeles, where she runs a math club. Of course.