Pdr Wiksten reminds me of Jan Mxlby. It s not that the diminutive Swede looks anything like the beefy ex-Liverpool and Denmark playmaker, but like Mxlby, he has picked up a decidedly English accent which belies his Scandinavian roots. Where old Jan has adopted the Scouse dialect as his own, The Wannadies frontman s accent veers between Cockney and Brummie by turns. His compatriot Christina Bergmark, though, sounds Swedish through and through.
The pair are in Dublin to promote Yeah, their fifth long player and their first for RCA Records, and also the title of their current single. Even the name of the album seems a very upbeat, positive statement of intent?
I would say that the songs are, but some of the lyrics might be the opposite, muses Pdr. It s very hard for us to say that the album is one thing. It s 14 songs that live through us and we love them all, even though we haven t customised ourselves into polished china we ve spread our wings all over the place. That might not be very clever cos people seem to like one sound, but we have a million sounds.
He s right too. From the 80s-ish whimsy of the single through to the balladry of You or the breakneck guitarfest of I Love Myself , The Wannadies are painting on a broad canvas. Yeah was recorded mainly in Electric Lady studios in New York, the first time they have recorded an album outside Sweden, with former Cars frontman Ric Ocasek on production duties (apart from String Song which was recorded in France with Mike Hedges).
Pdr admits to having been a bit apprehensive at the thoughts of recording outside his homeland: There is a handful of Swedish artists who have tried recording abroad and have lost the plot. Maybe it s because they get shit people to work with someone who was good 10 years ago but now he s bollocks. So I was a bit nervous before we kicked off this thing.
But the first day of recording was so good that we realised we weren t going to have a problem, Christina adds.
The presence of Ric Ocasek helped. Having worked with acts as diverse as Jonathan Richman and Weezer, he could handle their eclecticism easily, and had a sense of humour to boot.
I think it s fun to prick about and I kept calling him Mr Ric, laughs Pdr. In the UK, I call everybody Sir cos people are so class-oriented, but that didn t really work in America, so I started calling people Mr and their first name cos it s a sort of immigrant thing. Ric just told me I could even call him Mike if I wanted to.
Ocasek also brought his collection of guitars into the studio, leaving Pdr and fellow guitarist Stefan Schonfeldt to act like kids in a sweet shop.
At one point we had maybe 40 guitars and eight amps in a row, and someone started saying that we should figure out what amps we like and throw the rest out, recalls Pdr. I said, No, it s cool , but Ric turned around and said A, it s cool: B, it s Mvtley Cr|e . And he was right, it was Mvtley Cr|e.
The Swedish popsters have been around nearly as long as Tommy Lee & Co. The band formed in 1989, and quickly became stars in their homeland. It wasn t until 1996, though, that they made an impact internationally when the classic You And Me Song (from their third album Be A Girl) went Top 20. Since then, that song has been included on the multi-million selling Romeo And Juliet soundtrack, and they ve had a string of hit singles but have still to dent the American market. Three years on from their last album Bagsy Me, and lots of legal wrangling later, Yeah! is their first album for a new record company, RCA. Will this be the album to break the band Stateside?
We don t say that it s going to be the album to break us anywhere, says Christina. We don t think in those terms.
We re just happy to record another album that we love, says Pdr. It s getting harder and harder to get 12 songs together that everybody in the band loves to bits and gets a big kick out of. But we re proud of that and we don t think about whether it s going to make us enormous or if it s going to kill us. We ll tour, we ll talk to journalists and we ll hope that the radio will play it and that people will like it and buy it. We re really happy with it but if people disagree, what can you say? It s not sports, nobody wins a gold medal.
If countries were to win medals for music, Sweden would doubtless be somewhere on the winners podium. For a while, though, it looked dubious. After Abba, there was nothing for so long and then two quality pop bands together, The Wannadies and The Cardigans. How come is it something they put in the water?
You must have the same thing, says Christina, cos Ireland is a small country as well and you seem to have shitloads of big bands.
You can t really put your finger on it, adds Pdr. lIn Ireland, you have The Corrs and U2, Boyzone and Van Morrison, good stuff and shite stuff. Some people try to say there s a Swedish sound, which is us and The Cardigans, but what about Ace Of Base, Roxette and Europe? Certain bands in the UK sound like each other as well, you know; does that mean there s a UK sound?
Christina points out that Sweden, per capita, is the biggest country in the world when it comes to music export. They then explain that there is a huge number of former Swedish hard rockers writing songs for people like Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys.
These fucking heavy metal Swedes, as Pdr describes them laughingly. They were basically out of a job when the soft rock scene died and they lost the poodle haircuts, so they started to dust up old cheesy ballads. That one Crazy (by Britney Spears), you could see Bon Jovi doing that.
I wondered if Pdr and Christina would like to see The Wannadies career path follow that of their compatriots, Abba, in 20 years time. Would they like to, for instance, clap eyes on The Australian Wannadies?
There s already one band in Stockholm who only play Wannadies songs, but we don t really have a tradition in Sweden of tribute bands, smiles Pdr. I think it s very flattering, though. The Go-Betweens said that they were really flattered when they discovered we had covered one of their songs, and when we heard that we were really flattered in turn cos they actually knew about us. I guess it would be the same for us if people bother to learn our songs, cool.
What I find strange though, is when you have tribute bands at the same time the real band is still going on, like No Way Sis that scares me, Christina opines. Usually, tribute bands come about 10 years after the original band has gone and then I can sort of see a purpose for it.
They also kind of live the character, Pdr grins. Take No Way Sis, who have been in the NME sometimes and one guy is sitting there trying to look like Noel and the other guy s trying to be Liam, and they re answering questions like they were Noel and Liam. They re getting pissed like Oasis would do, throwing stuff, Oasis sack people so they have to sack people . . . and then you have to find a fake Patsy Kensit. Where does it end?
So we re not about to see The Australian Wannadies any time soon, thankfully, but the real thing should be playing here later in the year, with possible Dublin gigs scheduled for May. In the meantime, we ve got Yeah to keep us company.
Yeah is released on March 3rd on RCA Records.