The Radio Dept. Let Go
By: Andrew Horan
April 27, 2010 – Lund, Sweden
Officially, the nearly four year wait between albums by Sweden's The Radio Dept. was attributed to vague "unexpected delays".
However, singer and guitarist Johan Duncanson admits there was a slightly different reason for the hold-up.
"I was never satisfied with anything," Duncanson says. "We just kept on recording new songs all the time. I got tired of songs too quickly and, as soon as the feeling you get from working on a new song, as soon as that disappeared, I just wanted to make a new one instead of finishing the one we had been working on so we kind of kept on doing that for a couple of years."
By the time the fall of 2009 rolled around, Duncanson and his bandmates Martin Carlberg and Daniel Tjader had compiled between 120 and 130 nearly completed songs. It had become obvious that they couldn't continue recording songs and discarding them before they were finished.
While the dream pop band has remained fairly prolific when it comes to regularly releasing EPs and singles, their first release was a 7-inch single, there's been a considerable wait between albums. Duncanson says that the band could have easily released three albums worth of material in the four years between Clinging and their previous outing 2006's Pet Grief.
So, they made a list of 10 to 15 songs that would eventually become their latest album, Clinging to a Scheme.
Duncanson hopes that there won't be as much of a wait for their next album; they've already started work on some new songs between tours and side projects. Carlberg also has two kids so that cuts down his time with the band.
You might think that part of the problem can be traced to the lofty expectations created byhaving their 2003 debut album Lesser Matters hailed as "the most important Swedish indie pop album of the 20th century. But Duncanson insists that's not the case. While he does care about what people think about the band's music in "weak moments", he says he tries not to read anything that's been written about the band.
"That can create some pressure that's unnecessary and just gets in the way of us developing I think," he says. "So, that's our way of coping with these kind of things."
When their album Pet Grief started to receive a gradual buzz after it had been released, they couldn't really enjoy it because of some particularly harsh reviews.
"You can read 20 good reviews and then you read a bad one ..." he says, pausing before adding with a laugh; "That's we try not to read too much stuff about us anymore."
Duncanson readily admits that he's somewhat puzzled by all the attention that Swedish indie rock has received in recent years. He candidly says that bands that deserve to receive the spotlight are ignored while mediocre acts are lapped up.
"There's a lot of Swedish bands that I can't see why people would give the time of day, especially when you've got a lot of really good bands from the UK or American and Canada," he says. "I don't know why people would turn to Sweden really because most of it is mediocre."
Most of it, maybe. But with the Radio Dept. around, clearly not all.
Video: "Pulling Our Weight" by The Radio Dept.
