Column: A Postcard Life #2
My descent into the world of Scandinavian music was initiated and ultimately sealed by Kent's seminal "Hagnesta hill". I was 17 and living in Abingdon, a small village outside of Oxford, England, and my girlfriend at the time, a wonderful girl named Ella Torkelsson (who would eventually steal me away to Stockholm), leant me the record, claiming it had been dulled by overexposure - a claim I still can't quite fathom. At the time I had no experience with Swedish, but the language barrier did little to lessen Kent's impact on me. I'd never heard anything quite like it. Abingdon School, the secondary school I attended for nearly six years of my life, had been frequented by four of Radiohead's members in the recent past, and so their records were near-required listening for those of us still studying for our A-Levels. The astounding "OK computer", one of the best amalgamations of sheer beauty and the bizarre on record, a masterpiece in its own right, was the closest I could find to Kent's delivery, but it's far from a sufficient association. Over six years have passed since I first heard Kent, and I've still not found another band truly comparable to them.
I'd fallen in love with Karl Larsson's (of Last Days of April) vocals on "Angel youth" earlier that year, and "Ascend to the stars" would later assist in my eventual and complete surrender to Scandinavian musical creativity, but it was the distinctly arctic sound captured by Kent that would truly overwhelm me. I still get chills on certain nights upon hearing those opening notes from "Kungen är död"; shards of memory cut just deep enough to momentarily negate the present, and it becomes instantly clear to me why I fell so deeply in love with this band, Scandinavian music, and music in general. Learning Swedish during my stay in Stockholm only enhanced my appreciation of Kent and their albums, though my roommate here in the United States assures me that the English language versions of "Hagnesta hill" and "Isola" are more than sufficient. I have to admit, I don't despise the English lyrics to the level that some of my Swedish friends do. I prefer the Swedish deliveries, but am more than well aware this has much to do with how influential Joakim Berg's lyrics were in the early desire to develop my Swedish language skills, and therefore a very personal relationship with these records was established.
There are periods in life when music is especially important. My final year of British boarding school was one of those times; that culmination of two years of post-GCSE study in forty odd hours of A-Level exams, and my exodus from the United Kingdom to Sweden. "Hagnesta hill" existed very much in parallel to those defining moments. I was still transitioning between my love of hardcore and punk towards bands like Interpol and the Chameleons, and Stockholm exposed me to so many new forms of music - not only through my new closeness to one of Scandinavia's most prolific scenes, but through the friends I made across the region over the next few years - but I am staggered by how much more of my own historical weight is laden in Kent's songs than those of other bands I was listening to at the same time. "Beskyddaren" brings up so many memories: satisfaction at finally understanding the line "Kan du beskydda mig?", though that line became a far more personal and frequently dismal question in later years. The triumphant, anthemic cry of "Som om Jag bryr mig" from "Revolt III" colors more late nights that blurred into early mornings than I'd care to remember, but hope I never forget.
There's far more that can be said about "Hagnesta hill" than a single column could ever hope to cover, so many corners that deserve to be illuminated, explored, and have life breathed into them. My own hubristic ramblings have directed much of the attention on myself and why this record means so much to me - not only in relation to fostering my infatuation with Swedish and Scandinavian music, but as a nearly essential fragment of my final teenage years, and one that has survived adolescence and early adulthood - that a proper evaluation and analysis of the record has been rendered impossible. I'm sure many are shocked that I haven't made reference to "Musik non stop", "Kevlarsjäl" or the phenomenal closing track "Visslaren" before now, though somehow found time to discuss my high school level education and a few of my early successes in understanding the Swedish language. But what is music if it doesn't become an essential, delicately private facet of our lives and histories?
There are few albums I've ever written this much about, let alone more than half a decade since my first exposure to them. Much of Kent's album's vitality has instilled itself in my own meandering paths through life since leaving that little village in the English midlands, so I hope you can forgive this rather personal account. "Hagnesta hill" has survived every bandwagon I jumped on, every trend that I followed until it came crashing to a whimpering end, and has provided comfort and safety through some of the most important turning points of my life... it is an essential album as all the other lives it has touched can attest.
- Lars Garvey Laing-Peterson