Love Songs: Wildbirds & Peacedrums Interviewed

‘Rhythm’ couple in conversation…

There are married couples that claim they can’t agree on anything. But when it comes to making sweet music, singer Mariam Wallentin and drummer Andreas Werliin of Wildbirds & Peacedrums believe their new album, ‘Rhythm’ (review), rocks. And they’re not wrong. After four years of hard graft, the Swedish couple has forged easily the best listen of their career in perfecting their ruthless hunt for new sounds. Sonny & Cher they are not.

The duo met at Gothenburg’s Academy of Music and Drama in 2004. They were married not long after, with their meeting of “minds and bodies” part of an extremely musical communion, Mariam says. While both partners play in a litany of high-powered bands, they reserve Wildbirds & Peacedrums for their own unhinged two-piece explorations.

“Was it music or romance first?” she asks with a laugh. “That’s hard to say! It’s always been both. Music is like breathing for us and when we fell in love we just started talking and we started playing. That was it. We felt a connection. And as much as we fell in love as people, we also felt an enormous freedom playing together.

“Instantly, we felt like we were both breaking personal boundaries in our music. That’s the reason that Wildbirds exists, and we have been pursuing that freedom and energy ever since.”

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‘The Offbeat’

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Charting the path of that unbridled self-exploration has seen Mariam emerge from her cocoon of early vocal experiments with zither and autoharp that conjured up a raw tUnE-yArDs-like ecstasy or PJ Harvey-recalling melancholy. But signs of her burgeoning vocal prowess were already beginning to shine through on their 2009 album, ‘The Snake’. On the track ‘Places’, she maniacally coos and warbles across multiple octaves as Andreas expertly keeps a propulsive pace while her soulful voice jumps all over the place. Today, she operates from a much more satisfying and powerful comfort zone.

After releasing three albums on The Leaf Label from 2008-2010, the Stockholm-based couple say they needed to take a “step back” to gain some perspective. “Neither of us wanted to get tired,” the raven-haired Mariam reflects. “We needed some fresh energy after working so intensely on Wildbirds, so we explored other musical projects.”

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Our previous albums were more like pit stops between tours. But now… we felt from the beginning that we had the guts and the desire to make a striking album…

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For Mariam, those projects have seen her hit the road or studio with artists such as Susanna & The Magical Orchestra, LabField, Lykke Li, Lindha Kallerdahl and Anders Jormin. With composer Mikael Karlsson she helped create a new song cycle, ‘The Spirit & The Cloud’, which was performed with the American Contemporary Music Ensemble in New York in 2012. “We didn’t care much previously about Wildbirds working in the studio,” Mariam chirps. “It was just about getting the music out so we could tour.”

But the need to stop and get a bit of perspective was shared by her husband. “We vowed not to release another album unless it felt special,” he agrees. “It took longer than ever and we scrapped it and started over many times. We spent a lot of time in the studio and rehearsing – it was a lot of hard work.

“Our previous albums were more like pit stops between tours. We’ve never really thought about the writing or recording as being nearly as important as the live show. But now, after a break, it had to feel completely necessary – both physically and mentally. We felt from the beginning that we had the guts and the desire to make a striking album.”

Striking, indeed. Watching Andreas get freaky on his drum kit on ‘The Offbeat’, a standout track from ‘Rhythm’, confirms just how they have channelled their visceral sound. The video doesn’t hurt either, as it jumps between grainy views of a lanky drum tutor giving it large in his double-kick drum attacks to a barrage of red-hot erotic clips that lay bare their ability to deliver raw physicality in their music. And that’s before the rollicking cowbell threatens to tip it over the edge.

Off screen, Mariam delivers her most bold vocal display to date, pushing Andreas’ groove into an ecstatic frenzy. Where their music previously felt like an ethereal hand caressing your cheek, ‘The Offbeat’ redefines the group’s primal energy into more of a swift punch in the face. “I think everyone needs a very loud kick drum in the stomach,” Andreas declares. “That’s very important.”

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‘Keep Some Hope’

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Finally, the promising duo has clicked. Part of that success has been down to the physicality of their live show. It explains the couple’s inexhaustible drive to perform onstage and exorcise their musical demons, seeing Andreas team up with Andrew Bird, Loney Dear and Neneh Cherry, not to mention Dan Berglund’s Tonbruket and Mats Gustafsson/Johan Berthling/Jim O’Rourke’s Fire! project. “We are quite independent and stubborn people so we need to do our own things,” Mariam explains.

But with the spotlight returning to the couple, they have never sounded happier. Intertwined on the album’s front cover and morphing into one bundle of “flesh and bone”, Mariam says the experience was about the “core of everything”: “We knew we wanted something quite intimate. We wanted skin and we wanted flesh.”

The new album’s ‘Keep Some Hope’ is another scorcher of a tune. It sounds like it could have been lifted straight from a Soul II Soul album – except the tantalising moans in the background make it far more decadent, far more pleasurably illicit and put it in a whole new funky universe.

“We know what we are good at now and what we’re not good at,” Mariam says with a shrug. “It feels very pure now. It feels good. That’s all I can say.”

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Words: Geoff Cowart
Photos: Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt

‘Rhythm’ is out now on The Leaf Label and reviewed here. Wildbirds & Peacedrums online. See the band live as follows:

November
13th – Rough Trade East, London
14th – Village Underground, London

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