FIRESIDE june 1996

Ah, Sweden:  blondes, Bergman, tennis stars, alcoholism, ombudsmen, suicide, great rock music.  Rock music? Ja. Sweden is the world's largest exporter of pop, behind America and the UK.  Forget the bleached sounds of Abba, Roxette, Ace of Base -  the country's indie scene has been thriving since the late '50s.  While it's still the case that to make it really big there local acts have to sing in Swedish, more and more bands are thinking in international terms and choosing to sing in English.  Thanks to a government which spent its money educating its citizenry rather than feeding the weapons industry, Swedes' English skills have long been near the top of the charts, and the recent relaxation of government control over the communication biz has helped to make its use even more natural; with television no longer limited to the two benign, paternalistic government channels, MTV and BBC and CNN are making it easier for the hundreds of musicians at work in the big cities of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo, in the suburbs, and in the many towns of the north country, Umea, Lulea,  Skelleftea, to write English lyrics with a refinement, suppleness, wit, and directness that rivals their Anglo and American colleagues.  And with the language problem licked, the music itself grows in confidence and originality.

During a recent visit to Stockholm, David Robbins talked with Frans Johansson of Fireside, the hottest band on the independent scene.  Formed in '92 in Lulea, a town of 50,000, before moving down to Stockholm in '95, these four young guys, barely into their twenties - Pelle Gunnerfeldt (guitar), Kristofer Astrom (guitar and vocals), Per Nordmark (drums), and Johansson (bass) - find themselves among the leaders of what the locals term emo-core:  music which puts hardcore's blistering attack to the service of a naked and harrowing emotional content.  In Fireside's case, comparisons to Joy Division's purity are not inapt.  Fireside's first CD, Fantastic Four, was released in  Sweden in '93 and their extraordinary second release, Do Not Tailgate, recorded and mixed in nine days, received passionate praise there in '95.  Since then the band has signed with Rick Rubin's American Records and a tour of the States is expected this year.

D.R.  Did any of you have musical training in the beginning?

F.J.  Our drummer Per did, but our original drummer didn't.  The rest of us, no.

D.R.  Starting from zero is a great punk tradition.  But did that lack of music education reduce Fireside to just a thrash band at the beginning?

F.J.  Not at all.  We sounded the same way we sound on Do Not Tailgate.  We got our sound right away.  We knew what we wanted.  We didn't want to sound like the really extreme hardcore bands, because then there's no flexibility, no place to go.  We aren't those guys who have a lot of tattoos and want to scream about politics.

D.R.  Fireside uses the classic rock quartet line-up - lead, rhythm, bass, drums - but rethinks the instruments' roles.  The bass drives many of the songs, it's not just texture or subtext.  And at a time when a lot of bands are still looking to unfurl the next lyrical Neil Young guitar line,  Fireside's lead guitar tends to the metronomic.  The lead is insistent, piercing and invading while at the same time warning the listener of danger ahead, terrifying and terrified at once.

F.J.  Pelle has his ideas.  He doesn't want the guitars to follow the bass line, or he and Kristofer to play the same  parts.  Instead all three guitars play different tunes at the same time.  The rhythm guitar plays a lot of melodies, as if it were the lead, while the lead guitar takes on the rhythm responsibilities.

D.R.  You reassign musical roles.

F.J.  Yeah.  And the bass and the drums are fitted together quite closely, so the bass lines are fast and constant.  

D.R.  Fireside's music confuses the tried - and - tired punk attitude.  You take the basically punk or hardcore sound, hard-driving, pissed-off, assaultive, but instead of furthering the aggression of the instruments your lyrics implode.  Punk divided the world into us and them, "them" was always wrong, and the singer was furious about it.  Hardcore bands have adopted that same finger-pointing attitude ever since.  Fireside takes the same view of life as a disaster -  "my life is like a cave-in," sings Kristofer - but makes the speaker weak and wounded and, often, to blame.  Still, the music remains incredibly fierce and assertive.

F.J.  Both go on at once.  That was the idea when we started to make hard music with "love" or emotional lyrics.

D.R.  In rock the mosh pit has become such a ritual that it's an obstacle to new things happening in hard music.  If you go expecting a workout, you're not going to listen to what's going on in the music.

F.J.  A lot of hardcore bands want to jump around.  You can't play well when you jump around all the time.  It's pathetic in that way.

D.R.  In your lyrics, the world is abstracted into something completely personal.  There are no issues.  There's no system out there to blame.  It's just the singer and one other person, an "I" and a "you."  There's only the politics of "you  and I."  And the "I" is in some deep trouble.  Is the speaker in the songs always the same person?

F.J.  Yeah.  Kristofer writes most of the lyrics, but I write a few too.  Although two people are writing, we're writing the same person.  It's pretty dark stuff, all about love but about love that isn't working, can't be received, isn't returned - frustration.  When Kristofer writes, he's the one who has left and he's the one you're going to feel sorry for.  In my lyrics, I'm not the one you're going to feel sorry for.  I'm the bad guy. 

D.R.  "You blow the candle out and I can't stop you" - the dominant personality in these songs is a guy to whom awful things have been done.  He's damaged.  Fireside calls up the pathetic, slacker persona of Beck or the fuck-up persona of the Replacements, then drains all the fun out of losing. 

F.J.  Exactly.  I don't think it's so fun to lose or to be a loser. 

D.R.  You offer no escape.  You go straight to these feelings of rejection and self-hatred and desperation at the bottom of the well - but the listener feels relief.  What Fireside is doing is in a way how the blues used to function for people - as release.

F.J.  Yeah.  Kristofer and I, we don't talk about relationships with other people.  We sing it instead, to the audience.

D.R.  Where did this dark outlook come from?  

F.J. We didn't want to have political lyrics.  We wanted to have personal lyrics.  Our singer has gone through a lot of hard stuff, and you can see that in the lyrics.  A hard life.  

D.R.  In the States we're very used to therapeutic language and turning to shrinks for help, but in Europe and Scandinavia there is strong resistance to that.  Nobody goes to a shrink.  In the old world, ideas like fate and destiny and the unchangeability of one's inheritance, whether of social position or character, still dominate.  To deal with this unchangeable life, everybody has to be tough.  Stoicism rules.

F.J.  I think Sweden becomes more and more like the States, so in a few years there are going to be more people visiting shrinks here.

D.R.  Men still can't stand apologizing, they'd rather fight about it.  Fireside is putting forth an image of masculinity that is quite different.  Vulnerability without sensitivity, almost.  Vulnerability that doesn't suggest any kind of therapeutic reward at the end.  Vulnerability that the singer can't avoid.

F.J.    I think people are picking up on this different idea of manhood that we're offering.  We have more girl fans than male fans, so maybe they're getting it.  They can relate to the lyrics more easily than males.  I think so.

D.R.  That's sad.

F.J.  Yeah, it is sad.  You know, we're presented as a hardcore band in Sweden, so the boys are attracted to our sound, but then we sing about love and frustration and the heart, and it's difficult for boys to deal with that. 

D.R.  Well, the world's in a black temper these days.  Society is a mosh pit. 

F.J.  The awful thing about being a boy is that you can't be weak or talk about love.