TAS In Session: The Radio Dept.

The past year has been a productive one for Sweden's The Radio Dept., dreamy pop perfectionists who have been around for a decade, but who carefully take their time recording full-length albums in favor of EPs and singles, only releasing their third album, Clinging To A Scheme, last year.

Attracting scores of critical huzzahs for that record as well as a recent career-spanning retrospective, Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010 on longtime label Labrador Records, the trio of Johan Duncanson, Martin Carlberg and Daniel Tjäder have finally begun touring the States with some regularity, doing their first, lengthy North American tour earlier this year. They'll return this spring for Coachella and the Sasquatch Music Festival.

Johan, Martin and Daniel dropped by The Alternate Side recently to chat with me about the sudden flurry of releases the affect of Sofia Coppola on their career and why they're "ridiculously self-critical," and they also played a couple of older tracks from Pet Grief and from Clinging To A Scheme, the lovely "Heaven's On Fire."

Kara Manning:  Your last album, Pet Grief, came out in 2006 so you took your time and made your fans wait for the release of Clinging To A Scheme. What was that process of building up to that third album?

Johan Duncanson: There’s a lot of different reasons for us taking so long with the recording of the last album but one of them is that we lived in different cities. All of us used to live in Malmö, in the south of Sweden, but I moved up to Stockholm in 2005 and Daniel came a couple of years later. Now, Martin has moved up. But during the recording of the album we were constantly traveling by train to see each other to be able to record, but you want to be at home as well and not work with the band. I had a job and it took time. Every time we saw each other, we’d have new influences,  a new way of looking at the album or what we wanted to achieve changed. So we just ditched songs and wrote new ones all of the time.

Kara: You’ve been good about releasing EPs and singles over the years which is a form that you like, the short form. What is it about the beauty of the EP that attracts you?

Martin Carlberg: It’s easier to get your ideas through with an EP or single. It’s almost always EPs, but it’s more concentrated, you get more focused on the big idea. An album is too long.

Johan: Yeah, it’s harder to achieve something, if you have a conceptual idea. For example, the Never Follow Suit EP was supposed to be a dub EP almost, it’s a pop EP with dub influences, but yes. If we were take make a whole album it might take three years, but an EP is easier for us to finish.

Kara: You’re not afraid of being political and delving into dub, on the Never Follow Suit EP, makes sense, given the whole Thatcher England time with bands like Gang of Four and The Clash utilizing reggae and dub. Were you listening to a lot of the music that was generated during that time?

Johan: Yes, I’ve been listening to bands like The Clash and also a lot of old dub records from that time. I can’t say I’ve listened to any contemporary stuff really that sounds like that, but Augustus Pablo and all that. Also, a lot of pop bands that have been influenced by that kind of music like Saint Etienne, who we actually toured with quite recently in the UK. In Sweden, in the beginning of the 90s, there were bands that made a sort of plastic, Swedish reggae kind of pop music, like Ace of Base, that is so good. It’s also funny to drop influences like that because it provokes some people and that’s always nice.

Kara: The compilation is called Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010 - and you’ve had a fraught relationship with your label, Labrador, over the years, including a legal tussle. Was the title and compilation inspired by the freedom to have those records back?

Johan: Yeah, I guess so. It’s hard to explain the album titles because [it’s reductive] to explain them, but we tend to get aggressive sometimes. We want to be in control of every aspect of the band so when we’re pushed by the label or by journalists or something, we tend to get ….

Martin: Passive aggressive.

Kara: Did it take you a while to compile Passive Aggressive?  

Johan: The first record is just the A-sides, so that was easy. But since a lot of the singles and EPs have a lot B-sides, that was a bit trickier. But it’s just our 14 favorites of the B-sides that we’ve released so far. Some of them are just short instrumental tracks and some of them are like any other song. It was a little bit tricky, yeah. I enjoy listening to that record more than the A-sides really.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMvBCroKMrc]

Kara: "Every Time," which was on Pet Grief, came out in 2006 around the same time that Sofia Coppola’s movie “Marie Antoinette” was released. Which is when a lot of people began to hear of you, because Sofia included three tracks on the soundtrack to that movie, including “Pulling Our Weight.” Were you surprised or reluctant at first to be included on that?

Martin: A little bit, yeah. People think it’s kind of strange when we say that but it was a big deal for us. We didn’t want to be that big at once and have too much pressure on the album. We talked about it quite a lot.

Johan: Also, being too associated with Sofia. We love her films, but since we were a really small band we were scared of being this Coppola band forever.

Kara: How did she find you?

Johan: I guess it was Brian Reitzell who, I don’t know his title, but was musical supervisor for the film. I think his job was just providing Sofia with great music all of the time. He told us that he read a review of our first album and it said that these songs would suit in “Lost in Translation” so he got the album and listened to it and gave Sofia some songs.

Kara: Did you notice an uptick of attention? I did read somewhere that you were astonished that you didn’t get tapped by American labels.

Johan: We were a little disappointed, yeah! (laughs). We’ve never been into “making it” or anything like that, but you want to get your records out and we’ve wanted to come here and play as well. So it was a little bit disappointing. I don’t know why.

Kara: You’re touring the States now, finally able to get your music out there live. Was that part of the idea behind releasing the double album so quickly on the heels of Clinging To A Scheme?

Johan: It was Labrador’s idea, but some of these singles have been out of print for quite some time and they’re hard to get hold of so by releasing this compilation, for one thing, the eBay prices wouldn’t go up so much (laughs). Also, I guess, as an introduction to the band.

Kara: One track that’s on the double album is “Freddie and the Trojan Horse,” which was also an EP and also speaks to your political bent. It’s written to Frederik Reinfeldt who is Sweden’s prime minister and someone who doesn’t make you very happy.

Johan: [The Moderate Party] won the election by posing as a worker’s party which they are not, so that provoked me to write the lyrics, I think.

Kara: Do you always find yourself balancing the artistic with your political leanings, lyrically and personally?

Johan: Not really. It’s all about the music. We’re a political band but usually with political bands, the politics get in the way of the music and we really love making music and that’s what we do primarily. And then, you have to say something as well.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gezkkv3ovl8]

Kara: Was Pet Grief an album that you felt got overlooked? Do you have regrets about that?

Johan: No, not really. We’ve never really cared how many people listen to it. We just want every record to be perfect for us. We’re really perfectionists, that’s also one of the reasons why it takes us a lot of time to finish stuff. I have regrets about Pet Grief in some ways. I think it’s too calm throughout the whole album; it’s got this same mood throughout, whereas the first and third albums are more varied.

Kara: The first album, Lesser Matters, is very spiky and this recent album, Clinging To A Scheme has more of an uplift. Was that deliberate? Were you tossing out more mellow songs?

Johan: Some of them, yes, definitely. We really wanted to avoid that this time. We didn’t want to come across as too mellow although we love that kind of music also. But touring after Pet Grief was quite boring actually. Just standing on stage playing all of these calm, really mellow songs each night. We just got bored with it so at the end of that tour we tended to play Lesser Matters songs instead of new songs. We didn’t want that to happen again so it felt better to write a couple of upbeat songs.

Kara: There’s an interesting quote that I read, attributed to you Johan, that “no band should be allowed producers.” You produce and mix everything yourself, but do you think that producers can ruin the process?

Johan: Sometimes they know too much about music-making or recording, I think. But I kind of exaggerated (laughs). But I think interesting things happen when people who can’t record or even play music make music anyway and teach themselves. You can’t go wrong, really. There’s not wrong way to go. But a lot of people don’t think so and it took me years to realize that myself; that I’m actually allowed to sound in whatever way I like.

Kara: Do you feel that by allowing yourself to be a little messy, it’s made you a stronger band or one more willing to take risks?

Martin: We’re definitely more willing to take more risks. It’s not risks … we just like to do what we want to do, try new things. I think we have a fear of getting stuck in a category. That’s maybe why we like EPs because then we’re allowed to try out different ideas. The album defines us too much, I think, that’s why it’s harder for us to make it.

Kara: In the really funny introductory note to Passive Aggressive, Johan Angergård, the boss of Labrador Records, describes you a “ridiculously self-critical.” Would you agree? Has that held you back?

Johan: Yeah! Sometimes. It’s always like that, just before releasing something new I almost feel sick for a couple of a weeks.

Kara: Did you feel that way about Clinging To A Scheme?

Martin: Yes, really. Yes. Johan: It was horrible.

Kara: Well, given the critical praise and excitement about the record, do you feel more emboldened and not so self-critical? Or do you feel that served you?

Johan: I think it’s both, actually. If we weren’t that self-critical, I think we would be more boring as a band. When we started recording Clinging To A Scheme, for instance, in the beginning it was a really lame, almost conservative record that was being recorded. We had live drums, bass, two guitars and vocals and very little keyboard. If we weren’t self-critical, we might have released an album that doesn’t sound like now but something just old and boring instead. So I think it’s a good thing a lot of the time. Self-critical is good, but ridiculously self-critical, which I think is the case, I think is bad.

Kara: Are you already writing songs for the next record? Will you get it out more quickly?

Martin: Yes and hopefully ….

Johan: We’re going to take the time we need.

Martin: Of course. But hopefully we won’t have to take three years to finish the album.

Kara: [On the album], the single “Heaven’s on Fire” uses a quote from Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth: “People see rock ‘n’ roll as youth culture. When youth culture becomes monopolized by big business, what are the youth to do? Do you have any idea? I think we should destroy the bogus capitalist process that’s destroying youth culture.” Now, where did you find that quote and why was it so important to you that you wanted to include it within a song?

Johan: It’s from a film called “1991: The Year Punk Broke” which is a tour film of Sonic Youth, Nirvana and a couple of other bands touring the summer of ‘91. I used to watch that film a lot growing up and during the recording of Clinging To A Scheme, it just popped up in my head one day and I tried it and it sounded cool (laughs). So that’s one of the reasons. The other one is that I agree with what he says about destroying the capitalist process that is destroying youth culture. I don’t know how (laughs). But since we’re really lazy people we leave the destruction part to others and concentrate on the music instead.

Kara: Do you know if Thurston has heard the song?

Johan (to Martin): You saw him last summer on the street?

Martin: Yes, I passed him.

Kara: Did you grab him and tell him that you used his quote?

Martin: Actually, I was thinking about it just because I wanted to ask him if he felt it was okay for us to use it, but I didn’t.

Johan: We’re still waiting for the lawsuit (laughs).

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmjyZXYxkEw]