Swindie Neverland

Sarah and her little brother Jake were over 30 years old when they decided to leave London and sunny San Francisco to move to Stockholm and start a band. Contrary to all reason, this bold arrangement proved successful and two years later they’re releasing their debut album Boo. I hate to namedrop bands but not only is Sarah the spitting image of Kim Gordon, they kind of sound like a less noisy Sonic Youth with the droney, hypnotic charisma of Handsome Furs and PJ Harvey on vocals. It’s straightforward, dreamy and refreshingly unpretentious with lyrics that won’t make your stomach turn. I’m going to go right ahead and call them Swedes because they’re the best thing to happen to Swindie rock since, I dunno, Love Is All?

Vice: Hello Dag för Dag. I’m a little confused because we reviewed your album in March last year and now you’re releasing it again?
Sarah: Haha, that wasn’t the album. It was just a CDR we gave your music editor, Sanna-Maija, because she said she liked us and kept asking for a CD.

I can see why. How come you moved to cold and tiny Stockholm?
Jake Snavely: Ted Malmros in Shout Out Louds.
Sarah Snavely: No it wasn’t! Ted had a girlfriend when we moved here. We met Shout Out Louds on a tour and made friends with them, then they said, “Come visit us in Sweden” so we did and simply fell in love with Stockholm.

And then you decided to start a band for a living?
Jake: My roommate asked if I wanted to buy his bass and I did. Then I called Sarah because we’d been talking about this band idea for a couple of years.
Sarah: Jake had never played an instrument before. He’d sit in the rehearsal space for six hours learning how to play three notes. I would have gone nuts doing that! Now he’s a completely competent bass player.
Jake: We’ve written about 25 songs but we never considered recording an album, we just wrote them with the intention of playing shows.

Your songs are so personal, you can hear that they’re not written only with the purpose of recording an album and then touring it.
Sarah: But then everyone said, “You have to record an album to be considered a real band.” We’ve supported amazing bands like Shout Out Louds, Wolf Parade, The Kills and Lykke Li but the promoters said, “You can’t come back unless you have an album and can headline.” So we recorded an album.

Wait, how did you get to tour with all those bands when you could hardly even play yet?
Sarah: We borrowed Shout Out Louds’ practice space when they went on tour for three weeks, played for eight hours a day and wrote and recorded a demo.
Jake: That’s when we found our sound. When Shout Out Louds came back and heard us, they asked if we wanted to tour with them. The first ever show we played was in front of a sold out German crowd.
Sarah: To make it in this industry you have to really get your balls out and think, “I’m in this.” You might look like an asshole calling promoters telling them you need a show but you can’t trust booking agents to do their job. We took a $10,000 loan to release this album.
Jake: We’re quite intense as people, fiery Americans who will do whatever it takes. I think that clashes a bit with the Scandinavian way of doing things, people have even called us ruthless.

So your American mindset has gotten you in trouble?
Sarah: Well, the Swedish audience can be fucking assholes sometimes. At one show some drunk guys in the front row started catcalling me. I wasn’t in the mood for it and screamed stuff like, “Cunts!” and, “Dickheads!” at them. People got really mad at me. But normally I’m very respectful because the audience is giving you their time, which is an honor.

I bet they didn’t see that coming.
Sarah: But I mean, we’re singing a quiet song and people are talking loudly about how nice my tits are. Why can’t I ask them to go take a shit or just fuck off, you know? Germans wouldn’t dream of doing that, talk loudly throughout a whole show. They just listen quietly and then give you a detailed outline like, “Song three: little weird. Song four, second verse, first chorus: you mispronounced.”

Still, do you think starting a band in Sweden has enabled you to do stuff you couldn’t have done elsewhere?
Sarah: For sure, in the States we’d just be another band. Here there’s a lot of space as most Swedish bands play metal or twee pop and we’re in the Neverland in between. Stockholm is harmonious and a great place to be creative in. There is magic here, Swedes don’t see it, of course you don’t about where you’re from, but there’s something so nice about the Scandinavian mind and culture.

Yeah?
Sarah: For example, when we flew to Norway for a show last week everyone got into their assigned plane seats. Jake and I, having American brains, saw that the front of the plane was empty and figured we’d go sit there but our Swedish drummer said, “No wait, those aren’t your seats!” In the States it would have been a shit show of assholes with elbows. There it’s all about me, “Me against the world” and here it’s we, “We’re in this together, we’re a community.” People watch out for each other and that’s why they all sit on their assigned seats, because they all got on the plane together.

That’s a nice way of looking at it. Did someone come up to you and comment in Swedish that you live day by day, “dag för dag” or how did you come up with the name?
Jake: I actually heard it on my Swedish language learning tape. In English it sounds really cheesy but in Swedish it’s exotic and we do live like that.
Sarah: We asked some Swedes what they thought about it for a band name and they were like, “Ooooh, no, no, it sounds Christian fundamental” so we were like, “Great! We’ll take it.”

I think it sounds more like a 70s prog band name. What music do you listen to?
Sarah: I’ve listened a lot to PJ Harvey and the Pixies back when I was 15, when they were making their albums. Now I mostly listen to jazz and classical music.
Jake: Yeah, me too. But I also like the early Modest Mouse stuff, The Walkmen for their jangle-y guitars, The National for their lyrics and Wolf Parade. If someone would have told us five years ago that we’d be touring with Wolf Parade, it’d blow our minds. We absolutely loved their first album Apologies to the Queen Mary.

How did you get to tour with them?
Sarah: Our international booking agent arranged it. It was great but Wolf Parade are self-declared alcoholics, they like their booze and they’re drunk all the time.
Jake: On the last night of the tour they insisted on giving us money. We finally accepted and said, “Let’s go spend it in a bar.”
Sarah: After each shot, we’d break the glass so in the end the floor was completely covered in broken glass and the guests were hiding in a corner. The night ended with me puking in the toilet and Dan from Wolf Parade holding my hair saying, “I’m with you through this.” But that’s just a drunk story. You won’t print it, right?

Of course not. Do you fight a lot being siblings and in a band together?
Sarah: Not about the important things but we got into a huge fight in my apartment recently and I don’t even remember about what. Something stupid like cooking spaghetti. Then we both had this volcano of stuff coming out and I yelled, “Get the fuck out of here!” and Jake screamed, “I’ll never talk to you again!” and three hours later we had coffee together.
Jake: We often get into silly arguments like that but, as we’re siblings, we always come back to each other. We’re very close.

Have you always been close?
Sarah: We didn’t get along at all when we were younger. I was a punk goth vegan with hippie hair and black lipstick and Jake was a preppy guy listening to Dr. Dre in his car like, “Boom-ticky-dey-da-drrrrm.”

Where in the States did you grow up?
Sarah: Our parents were nomadic spirits. We grew up in California and the Midwest, Wisconsin, San Diego, Montana and Colorado. We often just say San Francisco because then people can say, “My cousin once went there!” Once I said Omaha, Nebraska and that shut that person up.

But you’re Swedes now, right?
Jake: Yeah, definitely and Sarah’s having a Swedish baby in April.
Sarah: He’s coming with us on tour. Both Ted and I will keep touring so we’ll get those big baby-headphones. We’d love to play festivals this summer but I’m a bit worried because I’ve heard from women breastfeeding that when you get emotional your boobs start milking. This woman told me she was at a wedding and, when she saw the bride, her boobs started squirting. I don’t want to be on stage and have milk shooting everywhere, that’s disgusting! I’ll have to wear a snowsuit or something.

At least next time some drunk guys catcall you, you can just squirt milk on them, that will shut them up!
Jake: Oh dear.

Dag För Dag’s Album Boo is out now. For more information and to have a listen, visit myspace.com/dagfordag