Acid House Kings - This Heart Is a Stone

Following the release of "Music Sounds Better With You", we take the opportunity to have a chat with one of the longest-running outfits in Swedish indie-pop, a genre that has always been fertile, representative ground for sweetened sentimentality resistant to heartbreak.

First off, I wanted to start by talking about your latest album. Compared to your previous work, the sound is very different, more flowery, luminous, and instrumentally richer. Why did you decide to steer towards more "pop" melodies?

Johan: Well, I'm always suspended between opposites. If I'm making a 'dark' or electronic album with one of my bands, it's very likely that with the others I'll try my hand at something more pop. Being able to produce different kinds of music is a big inspiration to me.

My personal state of mind is certainly one explanation for the change in sound, but I can also say that it's simply much more interesting to try something new rather than getting stuck on the same album for years. I like to keep my musical curiosity running high.

The timeline for creating Music Sounds Better With You was quite long — did you take breaks after Sing Along? How did you split up the work over these six years? Did you each write separately or did you work together?

Niklas: For us, six years isn't really that long. It took us five years for "Advantage Acid House Kings" (1997), another five for "Mondays Are Like Tuesdays and Tuesdays Are Like Wednesdays" (2002), then a record time of just three years for "Sing Along With Acid House Kings" (2005). In hindsight, those three years can be seen as a burst of creativity! We work very slowly — actually, to be 100% honest, it's me who works very slowly, and that's why we don't release albums more often. Johan works really fast, but he's able to channel all his energy into his other projects: Club 8, Pallers and The Legends! In the case of "Music Sounds Better With You", we had an album, or rather half an album, ready back in 2008, but we decided to scrap it all. It was far less melodic than we wanted. We then started from scratch with the classic approach of 3-minute pop songs, and it really came together well. Johan and I never actually write together, though. We only work on songs in the studio, and most of them are combined pieces that we wrote separately.

I know you're very meticulous when it comes to reworking a song — how many times do you go over it before you consider it perfect?

Niklas: We've never set any limit on how many times we have to rework, remix, rewrite or add new things to a song, and yes, we keep working on it until we really, really like it. If we don't reach that point, we don't release it, simple as that! Also, for me it's philosophically important that every album we make is better than the last. We never really change our style (not much, anyway), so the only thing that changes is how well it's recorded. And since change is good, and indeed necessary, the new album inevitably has to be better.

In the album one could talk about a particular dualism, referring to the contrast between the male and female vocals, which is probably one of your many strengths. Do you agree?

Julia: Thanks! I'm not sure it's one of the most important things, but I do agree that having two distinctly different voices enriches the listening experience and makes the album more varied. On more than one occasion our duets were meant to be sung by either me or Niklas separately, but after a while we decided the songs could become more alive and richer if we sang them together.

One of my favourite songs on the album is "I Just Called To Say Jag Älskar Dig", with that amazing jangly opening. Why didn't you translate the "I Love You" as well? Can you tell me something about this track?

Niklas: There's obviously a nod to Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You", but with a twist. "I Love You" is probably the most overused expressive cliché in the world, and it shouldn't be that way. It actually carries a much deeper and more powerful meaning than any other phrase, but unfortunately millions of pointless Hollywood movies have put an end to that. We liked the mix of English and Swedish, it adds more personality! As the lyrics say: "in Swedish it sounds honest, sincere, heartfelt and almost heartbroken", 'Jag Älskar Dig' has a completely different sound from 'I Love You', even though they mean the same thing. Actually, it was one of the first vocal melodies we finished, even though we had some trouble turning it into a fully-fledged song, at least until Johan added that jangly guitar intro! We knew we were working on something great!

What's the most important line on the album, and how did it come about?

Niklas: Well, it's hard to single one out as more important than the others. Very often a line matters more to the song itself than to the album as a whole. Still, in "Heaven Knows I Miss Him Now" the last line (aside from the choruses) is: "The memories will haunt you to the end. You listen to your loved songs from back then. Music sounds better with him". I think that puts the album title into real context. Otherwise, I always find the opening lines of a song to be the primary key to the song itself. If they're intriguing, they automatically inspire you to write the rest of the lyrics. In a way you could say they set the scene: "You say I'm hopelessly romantic. I'd say romantically hopeless" (from "There is something beautiful", ed.), "I know loneliness, it's a hotel room. The uninspiring bed, the late night TV dramas" (from "I Just Called To Say Jag Älskar Dig", ed.) or "I'm in the corner office, I don't work that hard, I know other people do." (from "I'm In a Chorus Line", ed.)

Despite the change in sound, I find that a certain thread, an ethic and a sensibility that could be found in your early work, the ones more tied to Sarah Records, has remained intact.

Johan: You mean on the new album? Yes, I think the music we loved as teenagers - when we formed Acid House Kings - influenced us a lot and will stay with us forever. The classic pop we make as AHK is what we're best at anyway, and it's what most of the people involved in our project want us to do, which means there's a natural limit to any possible change. Having said that, I should probably add that we're a thousand times better now than when we started out. Most of the songs we made in the beginning are pretty much unlistenable.

The videos for the last two singles, "Would You Say Stop" and "Under Water!", are really lovely. But why did you decide to build the story around a penguin in the first one? Where did that idea come from?

Julia: Honestly, I just preferred my penguin costume over the other one I had: a tiger costume! With a very low budget for making a video, you need to focus on simple, clearly visible ideas. In this case, the idea was the sad penguin. A sad person in a penguin suit is probably the saddest thing I could think of! And it also contrasts nicely with the happy beats of "Would You Say Stop".

Quite a few years have gone by since the "Play Pop! EP" of '92 - could you tell us how things went at the time of its release on the legendary Marsh-Marigold? Are you still in touch with Oliver? That same year you also recorded a split with The Bartlebees - the German scene was truly amazing!

Niklas: As kids we were huge fans of Marsh-Marigold Records. Die Fünf Freunde, The Legendary Bang or Oliver's band, Red Letter Day, were fantastic. So when we recorded our first four songs, we sent them only to Marsh-Marigold, and they wanted to release them right away! They all ended up on our debut EP, Play Pop! But to be honest, because it's the truth, the songs we released on that German label aren't very good, and indeed hardly anyone ever mentions them. Some have held up over time, but on average they're all just mediocre. Let's say Advantage Acid House Kings is our real debut album! Anyway, it's been a while since we've seen Oliver. He's a truly lovely person, and what he did with Marsh-Marigold and the Hamburg Christmas parties (small festivals held every December where the label's roster would perform, ed.) always brings back great memories.

Why did you decide to start your own label after Shelflife? What are the actual advantages of doing something like that?

Johan: Labrador was mostly started by Bengt Rahm, who wanted us as the label's first single. As it turned out, though, the first album released was by Club 8, and after I joined the label I helped him with the work and took on more responsibility. I really like having full control over everything, being truly independent; certain things can only really be achieved if you have your own label. It's not that Shelflife or other similar labels ever told us what to do, which cover to use for the record or anything like that - of course not. But having your own label lets you make the decisions about marketing, promoting the record, and so on. It gets you fully involved.

In its own small way, indie-pop was almost a cult movement, probably starting with the Bristol scene but with much deeper roots, since the Glasgow scene was already in full swing and thriving years earlier. Do you feel indebted to it in some way? Your sound has long since evolved in a different direction from that guitar-pop, and that's exactly why I like to think of you as the "renaissance of indie pop". You're definitely one of the longest-running bands out there, and you've helped keep a movement alive, almost "restoring" it. You've certainly been a source of inspiration for quite a few bands, and dare we say it, Belle and Sebastian first and foremost.

Julia: Wow, those are really lovely words! Too kind! To be honest, we've never really thought about how many people have been influenced by us, but if someone finds inspiration in what we do, that's certainly a wonderful and flattering thing. As for B&S, I doubt we've influenced them, but if you could get them to say that in an interview, you'd make me the proudest penguin in Stockholm!

In the past the term "twee" was used in a derogatory way. What do you think about that, Johan? Do you think it's changed meaning over time?

Johan: I'm not so sure, you know? I still haven't heard great bands claiming their sound as "twee pop", so I think its use is still a bit derogatory.

Sweden has always been one of the finest and greatest breeding grounds for pop, almost like a wonderful world of its own, starting with, say, Happydeadman and going all the way to Johan's new project, Pallers, released via Labrador last September. Is there perhaps a specific reason for that?

Julia: As far as the Stockholm indie-pop scene goes, I really think Johan and Labrador have made a huge difference. I'd say there's maybe a bit of melancholy in the Swedish psyche, and that's exactly why it's so well suited to making independent music!

With the birth of the first indie-pop labels, a genuine worldwide movement broke out: New Zealand, Germany, Greece, Spain, Australia, etc… Do you feel part of a scene that goes beyond Sweden?

Johan: Yes, I've always felt part of an international movement, even though these days I'm not really sure what that movement actually is, but anyway… It was much more obvious many years ago! All the artists I loved as a teenager, like the Sarah bands, McCarthy, Razorcuts, Felt, etc., were all very small and weren't even that famous in their own countries. They each had a dedicated number of fans in every country, but it was a small number, a kind of cult following, yes. And it's thanks to those fans that a whole little new world was created, a scene kept alive through fanzines, tiny record labels, mailing lists, mailorders and so on, and it was all wonderful!

What are your plans for the future? Your live shows are really rare, and I've always wondered why. After this new release, will it be possible to see you play somewhere? Maybe we can hope for a European tour!

Julia: We should be doing some live shows in the relatively near future, hopefully before the end of 2012! But first and foremost, we were born as, and still are, primarily a studio band. Right now, though, we're very busy with the new generation of Acid House Princes and Princesses (our kids!).

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