Peter, Bjorn and John have no flashy band name. They come as themselves. Far removed from their once-in-a-lifetime hit, “Young Folks,” and with a new album on the horizon, the Swedish three-piece are looking forward to showing the world that they are more than just a pop, rock, or indie band for that matter. They would rather be known as “a weird band” who can do whatever style they like. URB.com spoke to guitarist, keyboardist, and vocalist Peter, to talk about the band’s recent activities, their new album, and what surprises they have in store for their upcoming performances.
URB: The album Writer’s Block was released in 2006. What has the band been up to since its release?
Peter: Well we’ve been doing lots of things. First and foremost we’ve been touring over and over again around the world. It’s been kind of a new thing for us being able to live out of the band rather than having a lot of extra jobs. It actually enables you to do more music. We all have our different projects. I released a solo album last year and I also did quite a bit of touring with that. We also put out an instrumental record last year called SeaSide Rock. It was like a proper LP, 10 songs, a bit more experimental, not much of a pop record. That was kind of like a therapeutic way of coming down from the touring and just having fun in the studio and playing around with new instruments. It was really an important record to do. It also featured some dialect from out local hometown; that only Swets can understand. So it was kind of like a homecoming record, getting back to your roots. After that it was easier to start to work on our new pop record. We’ve been very busy. Lots of things.
From Writer’s Block came the international hit, “Young Folks”. It came out of nowhere, was getting covered by other famous musicians, it was on TV, in movies. Is it both a blessing and a curse to have had such an unexpected hit record like that?
I think for 90% its been a blessing. We were totally unknown before. We did some touring in Norway. We had just put out two albums before that and not a lot of people knew about it. I mean it (Young Folks) opened a lot of doors. Now we can live off of the music. It really makes you become more creative. If someone gives you a receipt and says its OK that you’re doing this, you’re good at this,which that song is, its easier to keep on doing whatever you’re already doing. But doing it even more. It hasn’t made us insecure or worried in any way. I think it made us even more creative. I think its been for the good. And the little bad part may be the (people’s) connection with only one song and them not knowing the whole story and everything. I think people get around to that. For us it was important to do the instrumental album (Seaside Rock) to show the people that we’re not this little cute pop band. We are rather like a weird little band and we do anything we like. Thats why we call ourselves Peter Bjorn and John because we don’t want to get tied within a specific genre of music or anything. We want to be able to do whatever. Some bands have a type of name that you directly connect them with a certain type of music. We don’t want to do that.
Do you feel any pressure at all to duplicate that success though?
No we don’t feel pressure. I think our label and our managers feel pressure. I think the new album Living Thing in my opinion is a better album than Writer’s Block. I think its really really strong. If we don’t get another hit song, that’s not really the point. We’re not here to make hits. We’re here to make records and good songs. That is what we are continuing to do. Its up to the people we work with to pick singles. Hopefully some of them work on the radio. If they don’t, we’ll make another record. Its not the end of the world.
Speaking of the new album Living Thing, which will be released at the end of March, what was the whole process of writing and composing the album like? I heard a story of each of you guys coming together with a mixed CD.
We started late January of last year after our tour ended, in a little garage actually in Los Angeles. A friend of ours has a little studio there. So it was just good to go somewhere else and play around with some new instruments. That can be very inspirational sometimes, to have some other keyboards, some other guitars, other than your own to play around with. That’s where we presented each other with seven songs each. Like very simple demos to listen to. And we also bought each other mixed CD’s of music to listen to, like other music to kind of reference. Because its hard at times. As hard as it is to explain to a journalist how your music sounds because that’s really up to the journalist to decide, its hard for you as a member of the band to explain to the other two what kind of sound you want to achieve. Its easier to play songs. That was very very helpful. Like a proper reproduction. Obviously because we listen to lots of different kinds of music, it was all over the place. It was everything from old rock, funk, soul music to early hip-hop and a lot of big-mid 80’s hits. Like Fleetwood Mac, like the big production thing. There wasn’t a lot of new music. It was a lot of old music. I think the album sounds very modern. That’s kind of how we work, very retro-futuristic.
How the album took place is kind of hard to tell actually. We went back home to Stockholm and started to work in the studio here and we just played around with the songs basically. We had in mind to do something very percussive and rhythmical, even when we used traditional instruments like guitars or pianos, we played rhythmically. There’s not a lot of chords or hammering on the guitar. Its more like rhythms and melodies, kind of like an African way of playing, west african pop music. They use a lot of that, those patterns. So it was a different way of playing the songs. We kind of deconstructed the pop songs and didn’t go the expected route. It was very creative and fun. And we used anything to make a sound… matchboxes, pop bottles.
Do you think it is those ingredients that make this album different than the previous albums the band has done?
On every album we try to do something different. You kind of look back at the album before and then you kind of want to do something else. I think for Seaside Rock, we kind of played everything. For this new record we kind of stripped it down a lot. We used different instruments. It’s kind of a spare and stripped down record. Minimalist. Which is kind of something that we started already on Writer’s Block but didn’t really go all the way with. Its a constant progression. And then the groove aspect of it, like the reggae and funk groove, was something we started on SeaSide Rock.
Leave A Comment!