interview by Robbie de Santos | view as PDF

Ah, the fickle world of fashion. Back in 1998, when wearing a button-up cardie down the local shops was likely to get a man pelted with Werthers Originals and cries of ‘grandpa’, Swedish band The Cardigans were riding a wave of critical acclaim and hurtling down a US interstate in an open-top convertible with one mother of a death wish and scant regard for the safety of others. OK, so that last bit didn’t really happen but that was a good video, and, more importantly, a damn good song. And the public agreed, giving the band their longest run of hit singles to date and catapulting them to the levels of international success that their opinion-splitting, faux-cutesy 1996 single Lovefool had previously hinted at.

Fast forward to 2006, however, and things couldn’t be more different. The garment is back in a big way while The Cardigans themselves can hardly get arrested. Super Extra Gravity, their latest opus, peaked a whopping seventy places below Gran Turismo’s #8 high on the UK album charts, despite an equally killer single in the shape of I Need Some Fine Wine & You, You Need To Be Nicer and a dazzling array of moody, petulant tunes full of surprises and curious twists. What the hell is wrong with people’s ears?

Oh well, consider the UK a write-off for now, but with the long-delayed North American release of Super Extra Gravity just around the corner, there’s a chance that this neat little album might just find the international audience it deserves. In honour of this, Robbie de Santos caught up with singer Nina Persson for a brief chat whilst on a recent promo trip to the UK where the band right heartily rocked the crowd at V2006 with a slick and stylish performance. American readers, this one’s for you!

You’ve been playing lots of festivals this summer — including one in Moscow and one in Serbia. You’ve even got one coming up in Belarus! Is it exciting going to places slightly off the beaten tourpath? How do you think the crowds will compare to Europe and America?
We’ve been several times to nearly everywhere, but not to the former Yugoslavia or Russia, so it’s great! It’s still a little shaky and always such a hassle. Twice we’ve planned to go to Russia but it hasn’t worked out. There are visas and the equipment might not get in — it’s a gamble, but it’s always beautiful to play that kind of place because the people who arrange the festivals and all the people trying to get a scene going are so determined and working so hard and it feels great to take part in them.

You finally came back to play headline dates in Britain earlier this year. Did you enjoy being back?
Yeah, it was about time really. I think we could have with the last album [2003’s Long Gone Before Daylight] as well. It’s frustrating to have had such commercial success on a major label, then just because we are not selling the same amounts [people in the UK] think we’re gone. And judging by our website activity, we’re not! We’ve played for such a long time that we’ve got a fanbase who’ll come anyway. The British market is very novelty based, that’s what it seems like to me. I feel bad for those bands that get hyped. It doesn’t really annoy me, because I know by now that’s how the industry works, but it’s frustrating in a way. We feel like we’ve come such a long way and it hasn’t worked commercially for us for some reason. I guess we haven’t made any compromises at all, so it’s a conscious choice we’ve made as well. But of course, as a musician, in your heart you always believe you’re the best band in space. So we think that everybody else is fucking stupid! You have to think like that to be able to work like we do.

I saw you at T In The Park in 2003 and you didn’t play Lovefool and you made fun of the guitar sound in My Favourite Game. Do you still feel like that about the old stuff?
No, I don’t actually anymore. I made fun of that guitar sound — it is quite fucking annoying, isn’t it? — but it works! I like music when it’s sort of verging on being irritating. But these days to play Lovefool would be like playing a cover. It’s actually ten years old and we’ve made so much music after it. It would make such a break in the set, it would be awkward. And actually we’ve made experiments almost to see if people would miss it and people don’t, you see. People notice it’s not there, but they don’t really miss it. So I think everybody’s happy this way.

You’ve described Super Extra Gravity as an “obnox-ious teenager”. After thirteen years together, do you think the band has finally hit puberty?
[laughs] Yeah, I guess so! Thirteen years…that’s when you’re at your height of your obnoxious puberty, right?

Do you feel obnoxious now?
Kind of, I don’t know what it is. I’m afraid it’s some sort of late thirties crisis, the last glances of youth, you know.

So do you feel like you were looking to the future and the past for this album? It does seem to hark back to the harder-edged sounds of Gran Turismo whilst keeping the more sensitive songwriting of Long Gone Before Daylight firmly in place.
Hmm, I don’t really know. I mean, I think we were looking back in one way because we made the decision to go back to our old producer [Tore Johansson]. It’s not really like we left him, we made one record without him and then we went back. I think it’s that we realised he does contribute a lot of essential things. We listened to the old stuff and realised he’s quite inventive, so that’s a big part of what we’ve got. One new aspect is that, four or five years ago, we actually learnt to play our instruments. We discovered rehearsing! We used to think rehearsing was for pussies, but now we’ve actually realised it can make a huge difference. I think one part of where we are moving to is that we are sort of using our skill to play more than we dared to before. We used to be much more production based and now we’ve become a little simpler because we’re a lot more confident now that things sound fine when we just play, you know.

Three of the boys became new fathers during the making of the album. That must have really affected the way you worked!
We obviously had to be a tiny bit more structured in working. I mean, the last record we made we spent about nine months on the bottle, working totally at random, any time at a whim. But this time we worked 9am to 6pm, twelve days in a row, then a week off, then we did another twelve days. We were very structured like that. The amazing thing about it was that, because people had responsibilities at home, once we got into the studio we went berserk! The inspiration just came immediately instead of sitting, semi-drunk, getting frustrated just waiting for it. This time we could actually work at 9am after a pot of coffee, it was sparkling. And it’s quite nice, because when you’re younger you think everything just dies when you start a family and things. And I’m one of the ones who doesn’t have children yet, so I’m the one who does things that the other guys wouldn’t. But, on the other hand, they are kind of funnier people because they have that other responsibility. They learn to appreciate it a whole lot more.

Is the tour bus a giant kindergarten then?
No, they just come and visit once in a while, and I don’t blame them for not wanting to. I would never go on someone else’s tour. It really sucks if it’s not your own. So they’re at home.

You starred in your first film recently playing a Finnish tango dancer in God Willing [just out on DVD in Sweden with English subtitles, hooray!]. I haven’t seen it yet but apparently you sing a bit in Finnish – was that a strange experience?
You know, I don’t even speak Finnish at all! I don’t understand a word of it — it’s a really strange language! But I’ve always been sort of fascinated by music sung in words that don’t mean anything. I’m a huge fan of the Cocteau Twins and I love the way [Liz Fraser] just made up languages. So, for me, it was the same sort of appeal. It’s a great challenge to sing something and the words just become sounds. Even so, I knew what the song I did was about and I knew what I was saying. I had a lot of coaching from Finnish singers and radio presenters on how to pronounce things.

Could you see yourself taking a bigger part in a film at some point in the future?
Maybe, you know; at least now I have a CV. I don’t think I did an amazing performance. My part in that film is not based on amazing acting, I was just a made-up imaginary creature. One of my best friends was the director so it was such a safe, small, lovely concept. There was nothing to lose and I had a great time. And if something similar came up, I might take it. I’m not an actress and there are so many much better ones out there. But I had fun!

Do you think the band’s individual projects have helped you stay together?
For us it really was a good thing. Everything that we’ve done outside the band — side projects, babies, university, movies — it’s important because you should never feel stuck or that you’re doing it because everybody is expecting you to. If you are, then it’s not going to be good at all. It’s a terrible cliché but our band is a marriage that really benefits from cheating; it keeps us impressed with each other. When one of us goes away and does something that’s really fantastic we’re like ‘whoa! come back, we want you here!’

After six albums together, is there anything The Cardigans still want to achieve? Are you already thinking of another album, or do you have other goals that you want to pursue first?
We’ve got some dates coming up in South America and that’s amazing, places we want to go. I’m really excited. I think it’s a big enough goal in itself to just continue and make sure that there’s always a point to us making records. I never ever wanna continue just because we have a record deal. I want to make more records that make sense, in a way. The fun thing is that when you start to tour a record like we did in March, you notice immediately how you start to develop because you are taking the previous record to a new inbetween land. Recently, we started to touch on the subject of what we wanted to do. We were listening to some music and we were like ‘I wanna go in this direction!’…I’m not saying what but I’m really excited!

Super Extra Gravity is released in North America through Nettwerk Records on September 19th.