First Aid Kit - We love Retromania

We meet Klara and Johanna Söderberg on a day the two sisters devote entirely to discussing their project with the Italian media. The fast, relentless succession of interviews might risk wearing the sisters down, but instead they're always very approachable, and seem happy to answer every question put to them in great detail.

The music of the great singer-songwriters of the '60s and '70s echoes throughout your whole body of work. You even mention some of them by name in “Emmylou”. Does it happen that you listen to an album and think, “I want to write a Bob Dylan song” or a Neil Young one? Did that happen with any of the tracks on “The Lion's Roar”?

J: Yes, we always do that, it happens with almost every song.

K: Absolutely! You know, sometimes you listen to something and think, “God, this is so beautiful, I wish I'd written it,” or otherwise, “If I were Joni Mitchell, what song would I write right now?”, and so I start playing.

J: Yes, that stays as a kind of first take of the song.

K: Yes, but then the sound ends up being ours anyway. I've tried imitating someone else, but it never worked, I only want to sound like myself. Still, it's a good observation.

Songs used to make history, they could change people's minds, or at least that's how it seems to us now. I've often read that your mother used to talk to you about feminism, and I wondered whether writing that kind of song is one of your goals. Do you think it's still possible to write songs like that today?

J: Mmmhh... I don't know...

K: People listen to music in a very different way now. In the '60s and '70s, record labels would pick artists and say, “these are the people we believe in,” and they'd become huge stars. Now anyone can have an audience, if you make music you can have fans, but it's not the same thing.

J: Maybe there could be a song that everyone listens to and that would then change the world, but it's been a while since that's happened...

K: No, no...

J: But I still believe that music can change people, that it can bring out the best in everyone. That's what we try to do, to use music in a positive way when we're angry or sad, so as to inspire people to do the same; like in "You're Not Coming Home Tonight", one of the first songs we wrote: it's about a housewife who leaves her husband... I think in some way it's a feminist story.

K: Let's hope all the housewives listen to it! [laughs]

J: Yes! The influence of the feminist outlook our mother passed on to us can be felt in all our songs. You know, we'd like to be role models for very young girls, and girls in general...

K: For people in general! As far as I'm concerned, the music I listen to pushes me to be a better person, makes me feel better, it's a kind of comfort for when I'm feeling sad – I don't put this weight on anyone, I just listen to some music and feel less alone, and so happier, in a way.

[Guia] I think that, regardless, your feminist upbringing comes through in your songs, maybe unconsciously, in another way too. You're two very young girls, and you seem so delicate and sensitive, like fairies, but then your lyrics have lines like "I'm a fucking coward, but so are you...", which you wouldn't expect, just by looking at you.

J: Thank you, that's something very important to us, that kind of image isn't who we are. We don't want to sound the way we look, we always try to avoid that. We want our music to be true and meaningful, we want to sing about everyday situations. The rest of music doesn't seem honest at all about anything that matters, I mean, fine, it's fun, but we want to make music that touches people.

Aren't you afraid of falling victim to this prevailing "Retromania"?

J: We already are! [laughs] We're very fascinated by everything about it...

K: I don't know if it's a bad thing, because for me there's just so, so, so much beautiful music, there's nothing wrong with listening to it. The fact that everything has to always be new is something that happens partly because of the internet too, as soon as you get bored of something you're listening to you look for something new. For me, though, it works by going backwards, and that's not a bad thing at all.

You'll be playing the End Of The Road Festival again this year – and so will we, on the other side, for the fourth year running. It's like Woodstock, but in a sweetened, comfortable form. What do you think about it? Is this whole folk revival just vintage memorabilia, completely stripped of its original meaning, or do you think there are still "bigger reasons" than just seeing gigs, for going to festivals, for the audience? Maybe it's more liberating than depressing to think that now it really is the music that matters, in the end.

J: Festivals are always something more than just music. Especially in England, it's wonderful, people have broader cultural interests than just music, there are writers, actors there... And the End Of The Road is also a family festival, very calm, relaxed. For us it's a lot of fun, it's like a big party, since we're all doing the same kind of thing we get to spend time with a lot of people we know.

Your first festival appearance, though, was at SXSW, which is about the opposite of EOTR in terms of fame and size. What was it like debuting on such an occasion? And how do you feel about playing Coachella in April this year?

K: SXSW was our first festival in America, but probably the twentieth of our career. We'd played in Sweden, Denmark and England before that.

J: Coachella is legendary, we really can't wait; and now it's two weekends with the same lineup, so we'll play twice. It'll be a lot of fun — if you miss us one week, you can just catch us the next!

Your story reminds me a bit of another Swedish artist, The Tallest Man On Earth. He arrived in the United States almost unknown, and within a very short time he was already opening for Bon Iver. Do you know him? What's your relationship with the scene in your country?

K: He's amazing, a real source of inspiration…

J: He's one of the few artists in Sweden making music similar to ours, and it's really exciting for us to see him doing so well; he also works as a point of reference for people, he's got a very American sound, like us, so the reactions we get are very similar. Swedish music isn't really our main interest, you know, ABBA, there's a strong pop tradition.

[Stefano] My favorite band right now is Swedish, you probably know them, Kent…

J+K: YEEES!! [they look at each other and start singing "Parlor" in unison]

J: That must be interesting for you, because you don't know what they're singing about! You know, there's also Demien (??), he's Swedish too, and he became famous in America — it's fascinating, because he sings in Swedish.

K: It's very 70s and psychedelic.

J: Yeah, he's really into all that Swedish psychedelic music from the seventies.

And what about indie-pop, like I'm From Barcelona, for example?

K: Yes, of course, we like that too.

J: Yeah, I'm realizing now that maybe all these things are really connected to our music.

K: NO!! But I think it's always been really eye-opening for us to grow up knowing that all these Swedish bands matter on an international level; I think it made us realize we could do the same.

J: Yeah, it's a very small country, and pretty much everyone knows and supports each other, so when we started out, other musicians took an interest in us and backed us, like one big family making records — it's really wonderful.

[Stefano] It's interesting, because even though I can't say for sure since I'm not a musician, it seems to me that here in Italy people who belong to the same independent scene mostly pretend to be friends just for show, not for real; whereas you two in Sweden seem genuinely close.

J: I think so, yes, I don't think it's just showing off, and there's no competition between us: if one of us manages to become a great artist, it means that at least ten other artists like her can make it too; if she's famous, it doesn't mean the rest of us won't be too; we help each other a lot. It's a very positive environment to be a musician in.

We've talked about your influences from the 60s and 70s, but what do you like about music today?

K: Well, obviously Fleet Foxes, Joanna Newsom… we listen to a lot of Dylan LeBlanc, he's great, his new album is coming out this year. He has an incredible voice, we discovered it the first time we saw him live, because it doesn't always come through on record. When we played at the [End of The Road] festival together, we were just rehearsing, and we almost got emotional, just from the three of us singing together. He and his voice are magnificent.

J: Yes, he gave us goosebumps, which never happens when I'm the one singing, but even just his voice was like "Aaah" [Sighs], amazing. We also like other things from the English folk scene, like Laura Marling and Emmy the Great.

Do you only listen to your own kind of music? Or do you also like completely different things, like electronic, dance or heavy rock?

J: No, we don't always listen to just the same things, sometimes we like to try totally different music, even just by turning on the radio.

K: One of my favorite bands is Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which is very different from us; Karen O is such an inspiration on stage, she's so cool, but at the same time she's always laughing, it's interesting because so many people instead are so serious.

How will you present yourselves on stage for the "The Lion's Roar" tour?

J: It'll just be the two of us and a drummer. We try to keep everything very simple, because we feel that having a big band can sometimes overshadow our voice and what we want to be, which is simple, with our songs. For us it's very important to create a connection with the audience, to be able to look them in the eye, to really feel them. We're absolutely not scared, we don't suffer from stage fright, so...

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