Interview: Christer Lundberg (Universal Poplab)
Avi Roig: Your new album "Uprising" has been out a couple months now - how has the reaction been so far? What kind of expectations did you have for it?
Christer Lundberg: We all hope that "Uprising" will be the record that puts Universal Poplab on the map far outside the borders of northern Europe.
It's a bit early to say if this will happen, but being interviewed by you is a good start.
The reviews have been excellent (except for one or two by writers who stated their hatred of electronica and clearly hadn't bothered to listen to the album). So we are very pleased! As we cannot hope for high domestic record sales in this golden age of downloading, we are hoping that our singles "I could say I'm sorry" and "Heart apart" will receive the same attention on American and Russian radio as they've had on the Scandinavian channels.
We are planning to do as many gigs as we possibly can in 2007 since it's when our music meets a live audience that our work comes fully to life. Performing in the USA would be a dream come true, so feel free to give us a call!
AR: What lessons did you learn from the last record? Did you try to do things differently this time around?
CL: When it comes to promotion and marketing, it's really hard to do anything very differently from the first album as we're still signed to a very small label. We don't have a wallet big enough to buy attention in the record store displays. Since the first album, Internet sites like myspace have sprung up. UP has its own myspace page (www.myspace.com/universalpoplab) that showcases our music and links to our own web site (www.universalpoplab.com). Hopefully, our music's popularity will continue to grow as more people discover it, or are introduced by the devoted UP fans we know are already out there.
In working on "Uprising", I really tried my best to make the lyrics worth listening to, and I know both Hans and Paul (Olsson and Lachenardiére, respectively) were very picky when it came to choosing sounds
and arrangements. We wanted to make a top quality record, an album that we'd be proud to play to our future grandchildren. If our debut album represents a dancing teenager on E, "Uprising" is a 25-year-old seeing the world more clearly through the mists of a thousand hangovers.
AR: A lot of your lyrics are very direct and politically motivated - how does the Swedish press pick up on it? And what about your fan/audience response? Do you ever worry that you're only just preaching to the converted?
CL: My lyrics can basically be seen as a diary or notebook of my thoughts and feelings over the last couple of years. I don't really care if I'm just preaching to the converted.
This is what I've been going through. This is how I see the world. For the songs on "Uprising", I set out with my friend and lyric consultant Michael Nendick to achieve an authentic and documentary feel. I want people to find more than rhyming couplets if they take the step from the melodies to the booklet.
There are already enough bullshit lyrics out there. In the music I listen to, I always appreciate thoughtful and considered lyrics. In that spirit, I want to give whoever makes up our audience the best lyrics I can come up with.
Some journalists have made comments like, "Great lyrics on the new album" and others, "My god, this is really pretentious shit". But the audience response has been fantastic. There are clearly listeners who have been attracted by the message in
at least some of our songs. "Vampire in you", for example, has given Universal Poplab a whole
new fan base of animal rights activists and sympathisers.
AR: Do you make a conscious effort to balance the personal and political material or are you just working with whatever comes to you?
CL: At the moment I have no idea what the next Universal Poplab album will be like, or if there is even going to be a third album. I've just started working on some new songs, but it's too early to say what the lyrics will be like. I guess my
answer must be that I work with "what ever comes to me," focusing on factual things or issues that are truly dear to me. Writing complicated lyrics isn't hard. The big challenge lies in trying to explain difficult themes or events in an understandable way.
AR: You mention that "Vampire in you" has garnered you more animal-rights fans - has the opposite ever happened? Has some Universal Poplab fan ever approached you and said something like, "I love you guys, but I love hamburgers more."
CL: I've never met a fan who has told us anything like that. If, by some chance, someone did say that, I'd have to shrug my shoulders and wish them well. Of course, being a vegan or vegetarian is not a requirement for listening to and enjoying our music! Many of our fans are surely meat eaters. (In fact, most of my friends, and even my girlfriend, are meat eaters).
While it's possible to write bland songs that offend almost nobody, I'm not interested in making music simply to be popular. I write songs that express how I feel and think. I believe that people respond to and appreciate sincere and thoughtful lyrics, even when they raise uncomfortable questions.
In essence, I write lyrics to please myself and I trust that they will connect with other people.
AR: Who do you see as your peers? Do you consider yourselves to be in the same scene as fellow Swedish electropop acts such as The Embassy/Tough Alliance/etc.? What do you think of those groups?
CL: I can't really think of any other band that I would call a peer to Universal Poplab. I really respect the work of Embassy, TTA and The Knife (who have each made a really great tune or two), but I can't see any obvious similarities, beyond being from the same town and using lots of computers.
I grew up listening a lot to Soft Cell and the solo work of Marc Almond, Paul has his jazz and techno influences and Hans works as a technician and producer on everything from guitar pop to extreme electro. I guess we take the best parts of each member's influences and meld and process them till it's impossible to call the result anything other than Universal Poplab music. We make the kind of music that we ourselves would be extremely happy to hear on the radio or at a party.
We are, of course, very pleased when others share our taste in music!
AR: You guys seem fairly open to embracing new technology in that you've done a few free downloadable websingles and so on. How integral is the internet in your success? Do you have any plans to take this further?
CL: I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that I'm a complete Neanderthal when it comes to technical stuff. I still don't have a computer at home and I write my songs on a nylon-stringed guitar. Thank god my fellow musicians Paul and Hans are a thousand times more up to date!
At first, I was a bit skeptical about using the Internet as an outlet for our music, but now I realise that the Universal Poplab site and our myspace page are both fantastic windows to the world. Thanks to them, our music has spread around the globe and we hope interest in us will continue to grow as our music reaches new people. The only way I can think of in which the democracy of the web has backfired on us is that a lot of people download our songs illegally through file sharing instead of buying our albums in the shops or as a download. But as long as they keep coming to our gigs I don't mind too much.
AR: Does the embrace of technology carry over to your music? Are you the kinds of people who always want the latest/greatest in everything or are you still happy using old synths and recording gear?
CL: Paul and Hans can spend hours on end discussing new soft synths, compressors, reverbs, microphones and computer programmes (which, to be honest, can be quite tiring for a technical ignoramus like me). But they also seem to really embrace the sounds of the old synthesisers. Hans' studio houses quite an impressive collection of analogue synths. I think the music of Universal Poplab is characterised, at least in part, by the merging of old and new technology, taking inspiration from whatever sounds good to us. For example, while mixing "Uprising" we ran all the computer-generated and recorded sounds through an analogue mixing desk to achieve a deeper, more vibrant, organic sound.
AR: Overall, do you think that Web exposure has helped you or hurt you? Has it affected the way the band operates?
CL: I'm sure that the Web exposure we've had has helped us in many ways. And I think that the explosion of music on the Web is a fantastic thing.
Now though, there is almost too much music out there. If you are looking for interesting new bands, new sounds and great songs you'll probably have to wade through a lot of shit before you find the good stuff. When we started Universal Poplab, I had absolutely no idea how much of the band's time would have to be spent taking care of Web stuff. In that respect, being in a band has become more like an office job than the clichéd picture of a rock'n'roll lifestyle.
AR: Do you try to stay up on current music? Any artists that I should be paying attention to, Swedish or otherwise?
CL: I have the advantage of keeping up-to-date on new music through my day job. (I host the daytime radio show 'Christer' on Swedish national radio P3).
Even though the radio channel's music has gone ever more mainstream, I still get to hear a lot of new and interesting stuff. From taking a look at your website, I'm pretty sure you already know everything you need to about Scandinavian music. Actually, I'm quite impressed as your site mentions a lot of bands I've not even heard of.
It's hard to pick artists to recommend to you, but the Irishman Patrick Wolf has made a strong impression on me. I love his first two albums.
AR: Are there any current pop culture phenomenons that you think are worth paying attention to?
CL: The pop culture phenomenon that excites me most right now must be the growing interest in live music. At least in Sweden, there seem to be more and more gigs, shows and festivals (and a lot of people willing to pay for them). I think most people long to experience unique things, personal encounters.
A need to see, touch, and smell. And since a CD or a downloaded file is so artificial, I think it's natural that live music is on the upswing.
AR: So, what's next for Universal Poplab? Any specific goals?
CL: Our plan right now is to do as many gigs as we possibly can. "Fire", the third single from the album, is due for release at the beginning of April. An animated video, done in a very nice old-school style, is right now in production. Creating an animated video with no budget is pretty tricky, but as with so many times before, we are being rescued by our fantastic friends.
Over the next few months, when I'm not performing live or radio broadcasting I'll be spending all my free time trying to write new songs. And for the end of this coming summer, we've decided to try a new way of recording. We're going to pack a minibus full of synthesizers and recording gear and drive out to a cabin in the countryside. There we'll lock ourselves up for a couple of weeks and let the creativity flow.
I think it'll do us a lot of good to get out of the city and be able to focus a hundred percent on the music with no distractions except birds and trees.
Hopefully, we'll come home with what will become our third album.
AR: Any last words?
CL: hm... I hope you'll like "Uprising" as much as we do!
Thanks a lot. Best wishes!
Buy "Uprising": [click here]