The Sounds Are Affected By Recession, Too

Even Swedish musicians are affected by the recession.

The Sounds may have opened for No Doubt this past summer and are on tour until December, but they feel these hard economic times, too. They also like to talk about growing up, writing songs, their connection to The Cardigans and favourite drinks.

CHARTattack sat down with keyboardist/pianist/guitarist Jesper Anderberg before their show in Toronto earlier this month. Here's what was said.

CHARTttack: Have your opinions of the U.S. changed since 2002 when Living In America came out?
Jesper Anderberg: Apart from the venues getting a little bigger and more fans, your mind reacts differently now then when you are 21. So when I was 21, I would finish the show I would want to find the party, not as much these days.

We can also feel the recession, especially with pre-sales. Some cities sell as they used to, but others people are waiting longer to buy tickets.

How about merchandise sales? You guys have some pretty great T-shirts.
Merch is weird; it's kind of going up for us. I guess once people have come to the show, they're OK with spending some money.

Has the merch gotten better over the years, maybe?
I think so. We know how we want the shirts to look like, but what we want, our fans might not share that view. They might think we look cool, but it's not something they'd necessarily like to wear.

How does the writing process work with five Swedes?
It depends. Me and Felix [Rodriguez, guitar] do most of the writing, but often we have blank spots. So if someone comes up with a great line for a song to add with what was already there, then it's good.

Everyone is very creative in the band. We're very open and everyone can do their own thing. Sometimes it's better to let someone finish what they had in mind, but in the end, everybody's part of it.

Ever since we've been a band, we've always been writing together to make it sound like us. If we were to take one member out of the band, we just wouldn't sound the same. It's like The Police. When Sting does his own thing, it sucks. We obviously have a magic combination.

Speaking of a magical combinations, you guys often seem like an old time rock 'n' roll band. You tour your faces off and have to work hard to stay alive, is this true?
That's good. Keep that image! It's mixed. In some ways it is like that and in others it isn't. We don't really want to look like a big shot band, even though sometimes we wish people who work with us could make more of an effort to push us better.

We're doing well, though. I haven't had a job since high school, but it's not like we're super-rich, either. You always have this dream when you're 18 of being a superstar, but then you realize it's a lot harder.

Sometimes when we release a song we realize it's not up to us how successful it will be. It's the time, the country, the radio, the economy. But what we do have, 10 years after we started, is that we can still do what we love to do and not worry about money right now and still be our own boss.

Maybe you're able to survive because of where you call home when not touring. Where do you all live in Sweden?
We live in Malmo. We live really close to each other. I live 30 seconds away from Felix. Johan [Bengtsson, bass] is three minutes away, Maja [Ivarsson, vocals] and Fredrick [Nilsson, drums] are five minutes away.

We have our studio there, too. It's a rehearsal space we turned into a studio and we share it with The Cardigans. It's a really nice community of people. The city is pretty small. I like that.

Tell us how it was touring with No Doubt …
It was really fun. They are a super-nice group of people. They had all their families with them, so it was like kindergarten. We hung out in their dressing rooms, drinking, had some water balloon fights. We were together six weeks and you couldn't ask for a better tour.

No cat fights between Maja and Gwen?
No. She is super-sweet for being such a superstar. And her husband, too.

Most important question of all, what are your favourite drinks?
Felix drinks cosmopolitans, Fredrick is rum and coke, Johan and mine is white Russian and Maja's is a screwdriver.