Where’s The Music: Swedish Showcase Round Up

Norrköping strategies...

Scandinavia has emerged as one of Europe's most influential creative areas across the past decade, with the area seeming to fling out a genre-bending new acts on a near weekly basis.

With that in mind, Clash sent roving reporter Si Hawkins to Swedish festival Where's The Music – and here are his thoughts…

Norrköping Strategies
It’s been a newsworthy few weeks for Swedish music, albeit mostly the online variety. First the Stockholm-based dodgy-download site Pirate Bay was shut down by police (followed by raids on several similar Swedish services), then Jay Z bid $56m for a Swedish streaming company, Aspiro, before a co-op of Swedish songwriters made headlines by demanding decent royalties from Spotify and its ilk.

All very post-millennia music biz, so it must be a relief to focus on good old-fashioned gigs, for a weekend at least. Where’s the Music is the nation’s first high-profile showcase festival, in the eastern city of Norrköping, and it’s a surprise that they haven’t tried before. Take First Aid Kit. The suburbs-of-Stockholm sisters gained much early attention by working the likes of By:Larm (Oslo) and Spot (Aarhus), which certainly paid off, long-term. Last month they were sharing a couch with Judi Dench on the Graham Norton Show.

As if returning the favour, Where’s the Music offers a similarly promising Irish act his first Scandinavian gig: that’s Gavin James, honed in the bars of Dublin, whose cover of ‘The Book of Love’ by The Magnetic Fields has been getting nice UK airplay recently – following the traditional boost of a Clash premiere. He’s back in a little pub here, and you can’t help feeling that this is one of those gigs you’ll smugly tell people about when he’s massive, like that time we saw Coldplay supporting Terris (bet the guy from Terris was fine with their success, right up until Chris married Gwyneth Paltrow. “Oh come on..!”)

James has the voice of a ginger angel, a lovely line in live patter and is already fending off obsessive fans. One teenaged lad drags his rap-capped mates into the throng then stands directly in front of the singer and mouths along with every freaking word. It’d throw a less gig-hardened performer: James plays along and eventually gives him a solo.

Another Irish solo boy on the bill, Jape (aka Richie Egan) is cut from a dancier cloth. Backed by crisp trance-pop beats on a Hot Chip tip, he gets a little rave going in the basement of the museum, a former textile factory on a city-centre island in a frozen lake. A fine venue this, the edgy underground car-park feel offset by friendly staff proffering coffee and cake, who’ll even run upstairs and make a pot of emergency tea, should a weary Englishman need a fix.

Monks, Punks and Jeremy Irons
Upstairs is worth a look too, that museum revealing in unvarnished fashion the turbulent history of a once-thriving town that almost closed down when the textile industry collapsed, then the tech companies moved out. Norrköping was known as ‘Sweden’s Manchester’ and those factories have now been recast as community hubs, including some vast gig venues. This festival’s logo even features the city’s distinctive chimneys, now quirkily transformed into mega candles.

For outsiders faced with a line-up full of unfamiliar Swedish bands, it’s often the names that grab you. Jesus Chrüsler Supercar make a promisingly beardy rock ‘n’ roll racket, Jeremy Irons and the Ratgang Malibus are mighty prog-meisters (although a bit dogged by dodgy sound here, and sadly it’s not really Jeremy’s secret side project), while Nervous Nellie’s show is a lot better than that moniker suggests: two sets of brothers sporting likeable logger chic while rocking meaty basslines and melodies. Marvellous.

The latter band perform at the aptly-named bar Stopet where, stupidly, you aren’t allowed to wear, or carry, coats. Grumpy bouncers and barstaff spend the weekend forcing unsuspecting festival-goers to patronise the pricey cloakroom, somewhat missing the point that a festival like this is all about zipping quickly between bands. Do stop it, Stopet.

Much more welcoming is Saliga Munken, a big, rustic pub fashioned like the refectory of a middle ages monastery and a fabulous place to pile in and watch noisy rockers over painfully expensive Swedish beer. US trio Naomi Punk certainly fit the bill, partly because one of them happens to favour a monk’s haircut, and their guitar clang is admirably awkward. Umpteen optimistic punters try manfully to jig along, only to be left hanging by those staccato riffs. They’re not for everyone.

Perhaps they’d (understandably) confused Naomi Punk with Naomi Pilgrim, whose urban pop is infinitely more danceable. But sadly not in the venue she’s been assigned to here, the sedate, seated Hörsalen, which is a difficult place to mention without sounding like you’re after a different type of establishment entirely.

Far better suited to this grand old building was the previous act, Ólöf Arnalds, one of the better known names on the bill and a unique talent: warblingly winsome but wilfully uncompromising. For this Swedish showcase gig, for example, she favours older material, in Icelandic, and it’s blissfully mesmerising; melodies that will swim round your head for weeks, even if you haven’t the foggiest what they’re about, and arguably all the better for it.

Rock Chicks, Rap Tricks and Chuck Norris
Pilgrim and Arnalds are part of a strong lady-heavy line-up on WTM’s final night, and that balance is a big topic in Sweden. Earlier that day there’d been a lively gender-themed debate in the festival’s congress centre that encouraged at least one panellist to immediately introduce a 50/50 split in her own festival’s program of talks: words in action. Later that evening, twisted sisters dominate at the hard-rocking Saliga Munken, the glorious all-girl retro-glam of Thundermother followed by a dirtier proposition with the intriguing moniker Crucified Barbara. Streisand? Windsor? Bush?

If it gets rowdy in there, shit really kicks off in a mighty hanger called Flygeln. This is where the already big-in-Sweden names play, to great swathes of pumped-for-the-festival locals. Three hip-hop acts blow the roof off: the cacophonically club-friendly Maskinen (Thursday), Wu Tang-style supergroup Ikväll är vi Kungar (Friday), and slightly potty party boys Far and Son, featuring one of the fellas from Maskinen, who enliven Saturday night by inviting half their audience onstage to jerk along for the big final number. Cue Selfies galore.

Speaking of selfies, sort of, there’s a wonderful anti-climax to the weekend’s most unexpectedly enjoyable set, also at Flygeln. According to the brochure, Raubtier “create arena-friendly metal with strong melodies, crowned by brutal Swedish lyrics. The ringmaster´s penchant for military metaphors and love of outdoor life really shines through.”

It does! Because Raubtier would appear to be fronted by everybody’s favourite action hero, Chuck Norris, with camo fatigues and everything. Backed by a more traditional-looking metal guy on guitar (chubby Satan), Chuck roars at his followers, probably about how tricky it all was in Vietnam, followed by hilariously synchronised guitar swings, super-macho legs-akimbo strutting, and an absolutely perfect snatch of after-encore walk-off music: the Terminator theme. Of course!

A jubilant Chuck, Satan and their drummer then pose, backs to the audience, for a triumphant post-gig photo; unfortunately the roadie on the drum riser then takes a really, really long time to figure out how the camera works. So they’re still standing there several excruciating seconds later, arms round each others’ shoulders, mad-eyed grins presumably still firmly in place, backs still to the audience, while the audience loses interest and rapidly f*cks off to see someone else. That’s showbiz.

Words: Si Hawkins
Photo Credit: Linda Akerberg (except Olof Arnalds, by Hazel Gumble)

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