Media Roundup No. 4
| It's been a while. But we have finally harvested enough quotes from the press to merit another roundup. This time concerning the new tour, Super Extra Gravity and stardom. | ||||||
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| Here are the quotes: Nina: If it's a tour day I might get up at noon. It all depends on how late you play and how late you've stayed up the night before. If it's been a good show, you're ready for a new great day and if it's been a terrible show the night before, I guess you just want to commit suicide. It varies. We do all our travelling at night in the bus, so when I wake up in the morning I'm mostly in a new city, parked outside the venue. [Sunday Independent, Ireland] Nina: The shape of the day all depends on the time of the sound check. If we're in an interesting place, I might get some shopping done. I might even go to see a film or an exhibition. Sometimes I'm in a city where I've friends and I might hook up for a coffee. But if I feel the least bit of strain on my voice I'll actually do nothing. I'm there to perform, so I really try to put that first. There are too many people who would kill to do what I'm doing, so you have to do you very best. [Sunday Independent, Ireland] Nina: After a show, you sit around, often with friend, and have some drinks and talk about the show. Some nights I try to go to sleep as fast as I can but it's really hard to wind down. It's terrible, but you sort of need the drinks and the music and the action afterwards, otherwise you're just going to lie on your bed for four hours with your heart pounding. [Sunday Independent, Ireland] You have toured exhaustively in the past, especially after the success of "Lovefool" – how are you finding touring so far? Magnus: Well, it’s nice. Full houses in Scandinavia so far and then we’ll hit Europe and see if we make the same kind of success there. You said that the last tour gave you a "great foundation as a live band". Magnus: Well we learned how to play decently! And touring is a nice way to show people that we’re still around. We might now make some money touring, so it’s a ways of brand marketing, or something. And a nice one it is. [The Event Guide, Ireland] When I see the tour premiere at Vega in Copenhagen I see a band that doesn't play anything from their three first albums. The Cardigans only want to play songs from "Gran Turismo" and on and the audience doesn't want to hear anything else. <...> After the show Magnus sits backstage like a big sweaty bear sipping vodka amaretto. He has the absent, joyous look in his eyes that I assume you get as a musician when you've given it all and really reached your audience. Magnus: During "Communication" the audience took over the singing completely! I've never seen that much sing-along. Bengt: Today we make music we really feel strongly about. That's contagious. [Aftonbladet] Bengt: (About not playing older songs on the tour.] I do not necessarily see it as a relief. The last three records are simply closer to us, that is why it is only natural to play those songs, especially as we have the feeling that our audience thinks the same. But to be honest, I love playing “Rise And Shine” and many other of the old songs. But if we play an old one, a new one has to be dismissed. It is not always easy choosing the songs. I would not mind performing for two hours every night, but I am probably the only one in the band thinking like that. We also only perform three nights in a row maximum and then have a day off. That has got to do with Nina's voice above all. We do not want her to have trouble with that. When we are on tour I would like to perform every night, and Magnus and Lasse as well. Only Nina and Peter reject that! [Gaesteliste.de] Nina: We haven't really written a whole lot when we're away because when you're on tour, you're involved with music on stage; otherwise you don't want to hear it. We write quite functionally, we make up our mind that we're going to write another album and then we just write it until it's done. We always have deadlines, because there's no limit to how long you can spend making an album. [Sunday Independent, Ireland] Nina: The urge to want to get away from our previous records starts quite early. Once we're done touring with a record, we hate it. That's a good inspiration. Not being satisfied with your tombstone is a good inspiration. Getting embarrassed about your last record is a great inspiration. [Jam! Music Canada] Bengt: We change with every new record, because we are so restless. As we are playing the songs so often and talk about them so much, there just has to be change. We were so pleased with the last record – the way we recorded it, this wonderful warmth of the sound you mentioned – that we decided to continue with that. But it was clear that we had to add something to that. At the end of the day, we wanted to rock a bit more on the new record! [Gaesteliste.de] Nina: As much as we wanted to run away from him [Tore Johansson] on the previous record, we enjoyed being back together this time. It's becoming a very nice collaboration because he knows us so well. When we rehearse, he comes in, listens and then tells us we suck. He insults us to results. [Jam! Music Canada] Nina: We wanted to do a record that was really obnoxious and really restless. We're being as punk as The Cardigans can be, but we wanted to act like spoiled teenagers too. [Jam! Music Canada] Magnus: We wanted to bring back Tore to see if we could bounce back from our split during the ‘Long Gone Before Daylight’ recordings. He was part of the team in the beginning but left after three months of recording. It just didn’t work and I think he had his mind on other things too, such as his marriage. So it was a bit of a risk-taking, but we felt, why not let that sour story lie and try it out once again? And I think it worked great, better now that we’re all older as we’re not afraid of him as before! He’s a special person but it worked real fine this time and we do trust him very much. We wanted to make an edgier album this time, but keep the band feel to the record and I think we managed quite well. [The Event Guide, Ireland] Your work filters many things; Swedish folk, literature and politics. There is a recurring theme of conflict and conquest. Magnus: I don’t know; guess some of the moody stuff comes from folklore, Swedish or elsewhere. Peter has this ability to write the simplest and most natural melodies. But he's not listening to much music anymore, maybe a little hard rock to cleanse his head or some Marley with his son. So it's strange that he's the songwriter, but I guess it all comes to his head? I have got a much bigger interest in new music and movies but that doesn’t seem to help me in the slightest. We've never flashed our political views in music though we’re all lefties/green parties. I guess "Godspell" is the first political song in our career. Nina wrote the lyrics about a big scandal within a Swedish sect-like church where the priest was fooling around a lot and then had his mistress kill his wife or something like that. Hence the "it's not murder, it's an act of faith" line at the end. But basically it's about people who willingly give up their own speech to authorities. Priests or politicians, men in power are all the same. [The Event Guide, Ireland] Magnus: I hope that we can still pull off some good albums, but you never know. What I do know is that we feel really confident and happy together, maybe better than ever. So if good mental and emotional health provides good music, then we’re set for another couple of years! I heard that Peter has some ten new tunes, but none of us have listened to them yet. Guess it’s better to wait a while; otherwise we’ll be frustrated with this touring. [The Event Guide, Ireland] According to Nina the only collective ritual before going onstage is for the band to stand in a ring and hug. Magnus: Peter came up with that idea. We hug and look each other in the eyes to remind ourselves that this is something we do together. It's so easy for you to float around in your own world, to take the others for granted. [Aftonbladet] A new tour is a journey, of course, but the true journey was the one leading up to them starting to hug. Bengt: The goal for us was to sell 5000 copies of the first album but things just got out of hand and we didn't really reflect on it a lot. We didn't question if we really could stand behind out music. Peter: It's not entirely natural to take on the role as a popstar when you're 19 years old and come from Huskvarna and have never even met anyone who actually had recorded an album, not even come into contact with anyone in the business, and then you go and sell a million records yourself. Nina: You didn't even have the time to start thinking it was desirable and cool. I was uncomfortable which made it even more depressing, if possible. You should be feeling so damn good! Why weren't we more grateful? That was so spoiled of us. I know that there are hordes of kids out there who would kill to live everything that we have lived. [Aftonbladet] Nina: In the past I could be embarrassed of people when they treated me like a popstar. Like, cool it, you know I'm just a normal person. Today I allow myself to think that I deserve the respect, I am a popstar, it's my job. [Aftonbladet] *** If you can't wait until the next media roundup, here are the links to the previous ones, in case you've forgotten what they said. http://www.cardigans.com/?sid=...&id=3410 http://www.cardigans.com/?sid=...&id=3321 http://www.cardigans.com/?sid=...&id=3287 Thanks to Annika (-berlin-) for helping us out with German translations once again. |
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