Scenestar

ARTICLE BY CHERI GREEN

Following a tour with No Doubt, The Sounds have launched a headlining tour here in the U.S. Having been together for more than a decade, The Sounds have perfected their onstage presence with an energy that instantly grabs you and leaves you with an exciting connection with the band. Even if one has never been to a Sounds show, the band has an explosive impact on the audience. Lead singer Maja Ivarsson took time out of her busy day to talk with The Scenestar about the band’s third album, Crossing the Rubicon, right before The Sounds’ Wiltern shows on Oct. 21 and 22.

SS: Before I begin I want to say “Happy Belated Birthday.”
MI: Aww. Thank you. I appreciate it.

SS: Did you celebrate it here in the States?
MI: Yeah, we were in Orlando, had a show on my birthday, which was really cool. My mom and my sister came over from Sweden to celebrate it. That was their first time in the U.S. ever. That was pretty cool.

SS: How did they like the U.S.?
MI: They loved it. Orlando might not be the most historic kind of town in the U.S., but we had a good time. It was just great being together. We went shopping and went out, had Taco Bell for the first time, which was pretty funny.

SS: I’ve heard you mention L.A. was your home away from home. I was at a show recently, and you said your song “Midnight Sun” was written with Los Angeles in mind. Could you talk about that?
MI: Oh, yeah. That is true. I think ever since we first came to the U.S., I mean it’s many years ago now, we had an almost immediate success in L.A. We got some fans right away at the first couple shows we did. I remember Troubadour was the first show we did in L.A. and Viper Room, and things just grew really fast. L.A. for us has always been ‘home away from home,’ and we spent a lot of time here recording this last album. When you spend so much time in one place, you get friends and you know places you like to hang out, and you get your favorite dive bar and you hang around places you feel comfortable in. I think L.A. is that kind of place. But the first time, I didn’t like it at all. [It was] too big, and I don’t have a driver’s license, and it’s impossible to get around L.A. without a car.

SS: I’ve lived in L.A. my whole life and sometimes it’s impossible WITH a car.
MI: [Laughs] Yeah, that is true. I actually know that myself now as well. But L.A. has always been a great place for our band, and definitely one of those songs we wrote we had L.A. in mind.

SS: Could you talk about the meaning behind the title of the third album, Crossing the Rubicon?
MI: Well, it was our drummer, Fredrick. We were working in the studio doing all the pre-production and song writing in Sweden, and he came to the studio one day and said, “Hey, listen up. I know this saying ‘Crossing the Rubicon,’” which means the point of no return with Julius Cesar and all his troops. And he told us the whole story, and we were like ‘Fuck, that’s really cool.’ And since the last album, it was a big thing for our band since we left pretty much all the labels that we had around the world. I think a lot of bands do that nowadays, become independent, and they realize that a new band will have to do pre-fixed deals, which means you have to share merchandise and show money and all that kind of stuff, which we’ve been blessed not to have to do in the beginning. Our biggest income has always been the touring. So for us to give some of that money away to a label would be devastating for our band. We decided to go on our own, we started our own label and we released our record through a U.S. company called Original Signals Recording. They had their heart in the right place and passion for music, which is important for our band. So this record we paid for ourselves, which is not easy. We just did a couple of shows in Finland, we used that money to record the album and pick the producers that we wanted and the studios that we wanted to work in, stuff like that. So I think that’s why we named the album “Crossing the Rubicon.” Also, I think the songs that we wrote in the past were more naïve, kind of up-tempo dance tracks, like a pre-party kind of beat album. I think [for] this album, every one of us had bigger songs in mind, and I think the title goes very well with the bombastic and synthetic beats.

SS: I was going to comment on the evolution from your first album to this one, because a lot of the songs on this later album have a softer side, and there are more ballads. When you’re writing the songs, are you aware of this ahead of time, like ‘OK, these are going to be ballads’ or ‘These are going to be energetic?’
MI: I think for this album, we had so many songs to pick from, at least 28 to 30 songs. I mean not finished songs, but song ideas that we had in the studio before we went to the U.S. to record. I think even if you have more songs than you can actually fit on an album, you realize that you can’t actually do an album that’s too scattered. You need to have the same kind of vibe throughout the whole album. I think that’s why there are a lot more mid-tempo and slower songs, and it makes the album much better than trying to go up and down, up and down. But we still have that kind of party thing in our band going on, and I think you can tell that from our live shows. We play all those new songs as well, not all of them but a lot of it. We still always play the songs that everybody knows as well; I think that’s really important. You never know, maybe the next record’s going to be totally opposite. We change from record to record, and it’s important. I think many bands do that, as the third album will always be kind of bigger, larger than life. I think that’s very common. And we were so young when we first started doing music, we had no idea it was going to be like that. Times change, you’re really young as a teenager starting out. It’s going to be a lot different when you’re 30.

SS: For those who might not know, if you could clarify: You always play a song that the audience gets to experience before the band goes onstage. Could you touch on what the song is and when that started getting included?
MI: It has been different from tour to tour. The last show we did, or two shows ago, we were in New Orleans, and we played in a much smaller venue. I’ve never been there before. There we used an intro song from a musical called Chess, which was [written by] the songwriters from ABBA, Bjorn and Benny. They wrote this musical in the ’80s or ’90s, and it’s one of those songs that is a good thing to have before you go onstage, and the audience can be ready for a good show. But on this tour, we’ve had a bit of a different approach to the set list. The guys usually go up and start with “Crossing the Rubicon.” It’s a very slow, kind of mellow start for the show. So it’s different. In the past, we’ve used Journey. We’ll see what happens when we get to L.A.

SS: I’ve had the privilege of going to several of your shows, and sometimes back to back shows. I was wondering how you keep that vibe that is so energetic. Your band is always at 110%. I’ve never been to a show of yours where it was like ‘Oh, here we go again with this song.’ The shows have always been full of energy. How do you maintain that consistency?
MI: Well, 90% is because of you guys. I think when you see the fans in the audience, and they get so excited about a song, and even if it’s a song they’ve heard for the last six or eight years, and they still get excited, of course that’s going to feed off to the band. And also the rest of the 10% is experience. We’ve been doing it for many years and know what it takes to put on a good show. And it’s our responsibility. I don’t like bands who think less or think they’re smarter than everybody else. I think if you paid good money to see a show, it’s the band’s responsibility to make that night special. And I know what it takes; I’ve been doing it for many years and I enjoy it. I have a good time while I’m doing it.

SS: I can definitely tell you are enjoying yourself as well.
MI: Well, thank you. If I wasn’t enjoying myself, I probably wouldn’t do it. I love it. I appreciate you noticing it. We just came from the No Doubt tour, and it was so different. We’ve been a band for so many years, and we went on this tour as the first band out of three, and of course it’s going to be tough to make the audience like you if they’ve never heard about you before. But we made it pretty good after every show, and almost everybody was standing up and giving us a big round of applause, which is really cool.

SS: That is pretty awesome. It’s probably due to your energy. It’s pretty contagious!
MI: Oh, you are a sweetheart. Did you ever get a chance to see No Doubt when they were in California?

SS: No I didn’t get a chance to see that show, but I did see you at the Key Club [in Hollywood]. I think it was in the middle of that?
MI: It was. That was a fun show. That was really cool. And fortunately that was the best tour we’ve ever been on. I mean we had been doing a lot of tours, believe me. But those guys were so cool. The drum tech and the guitar tech who are still working with us from that tour, we still talk about it like, ‘Man, that was good times.’

SS: L.A. tends to absorb the vibes that you give out. There are a lot of stage divers, a lot of crowd surfers. A lot of people make it on stage, and you always have great interaction with the audience. How comfortable are you with fans getting up there like that?
MI: I think it’s super cool. I love when people come up onstage. I remember we did a show in Mertyl Beach, and I think when it’s off season it’s just really hard to play shows there. There’s hardly anybody living there, and there’s nobody going to any shows either, so we had a show at House of Blues. Capacity was 2,000 people with maybe 200 people there. But at the end of the show, maybe 50% of the audience was up onstage, which is not that many but still a lot of people. And it was super cool, and I love it, and they all go nuts. As long as you don’t steal stuff. They do that in England. They grab like a guitar tuner or shit like that, and it’s like, ‘What? Where did that go?’ You know that kind of stuff. But otherwise, people just want to have a good time. They want to dance and get close to the band, which is really cool. I enjoy it. It’s worse actually when they grab you.

SS: Yeah, I’ve been to shows where you’ll just dance with them, and I always thought that’s pretty cool, because some bands don’t welcome that and call security right away.
MI: But that’s stupid, I think. I mean, I guess it depends on how big the band is. If you’re a super big star, of course there are going to be wacky people out there, some of them might want to hurt you. But most of the time, I think people are there because they love you, they want to hear your music, and they want to get closer to the band. They want to experience the live show and what it’s all about. I think it’s all good. People are cool, man.

SS: As long as they don’t steal anything, right?
MI: Yeah, as long as they don’t steal anything or grab my boobs or shit like that.

SS: What are you looking forward to the most out of this tour?
MI: I think it’s the length of the show that we can do now. We can play almost an hour and a half every night, which is what we love to do. I think the length of the show and when you have that many albums and the people in the audience are actually there for you, that’s really great for our band. It’s much more fun to know that you sell out a place, and they’re there for you and not the next band that’s going to be onstage.

SS: Right! It’s exclusively for you.
MI: Exactly.

SS: For audience members who are there for the first time and have never experienced your music or seen you live, is there something you want them to walk away with?
MI: I think music in general should be something used to escape life. Even if you are having a good time or a bad time, you’re really depressed or you’re really sad, if you go to a Sounds show, the only thing we want to do is put a smile on your face. Forget about everything you don’t want to think about. And it’s an hour and a half, and if we could just kill boredom or whatever it is that’s bothering you and just put a smile on your face and you have a good time and you feel like that was worth every penny and you forget about bad stuff. I think that’s what our band is good at. We make the audience feel like they’re in the moment, and they’re enjoying the moment as it is right now and just forget about everything else that’s not working out for them. I think that’s what music should be, even if you’re just listening to a CD. It’s just a way to escape.

SS: What’s on your mind right before hitting the stage?
MI: Lately, it has been tequila. [Laughs] We don’t drink so much hard liquor, but the last couple shows we’ve had tequila on the rider, which is really nice. It has been a couple shots of tequila and a cigarette, and I’m done.

SS: Sounds like the makings of a great show!
MI: Yup, it is, you know? You need a bit of a party vibe. We usually listen to a lot of good music and party mostly before the show. I usually don’t party so much afterwards, since we do so many shows, but a little bit before is not so bad!

The Sounds perform at The Wiltern on Oct. 21 and 22. Tickets are still available via LiveNation.