Nina: Up Close And Persson-al

This month sees Nina Persson and A Camp return with their second album, Colonia, the making of which seems to have been a considerably different process to the band’s self-titled first record. Whereas their debut was recorded in the bucolic environs of upstate New York with alt.country guru and Sparklehorse mastermind Mark Linkous, Colonia was made in New York city. Nina agrees that there were significant changes in the group’s approach this time around.

“I think a second record is always very different,” she reflects down the phone line from the Big Apple. “No matter how you do it, a first record is always a collection of your greatest hits. The second time you usually have to make it from scratch, and you have to get a new concept. With the first album, we had some songs, and we recorded them very organically, little by little, and drank a lot of alcohol and hung out. This time, we were much more focused in every way.
“Partly because we were in expensive New York City studios, which is an incentive to work quickly, for sure. And also, we didn’t feel like we stressed anything. Our creative juices were going berserk, so we just went for it.”
Colonia features a notable array of guest musicians, including Joan Wasser (aka Joan As Policewoman), Kevin March of Guided By Voices and former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha. Although one might not detect many musical similarities between Smashing Pumpkins and Nina’s other band, The Cardigans, Iha’s songwriting has always had a mellow, country-ish element, as evidenced on his 1998 solo album, Let It Come Down.
“For sure, he’s an old rocker, but he’s just the sweetest,” Nina coos. “I met him when I was with The Cardigans, years ago. I remember him from way back, because he was one of the people who was the nicest to me.”
Nina says that her bandmates, Nathan Larson (who is also Nina’s husband) and Niclas Frisk, also have connections with Iha.
“James is an old friend of Nathan’s; they toured together a bunch back in the ’90s. And James and Niclas are best friends.”
What would Nina say is the chief lyrical subject matter on Colonia? Is it the trials and tribulations of love, as she has traditionally liked to write about?
“Yeah, more or less,” she chuckles. “But I think we might have explored a few more different angles than on the first record. It’s a lot about the human urge to conquer and own, hence the title Colonia.”
One of the biggest hits Nina was involved with in recent years was the Manic Street Preachers single ‘Your Love Alone Is Not Enough’, which narrowly missed topping the UK charts in 2007, and also reached the Irish top ten. How did the collaboration come about?
“Manic Street Preachers were a band that The Cardigans played with at so many festivals,” recalls Nina. “I’m sure we got drunk together at some point. But I don’t particularly know them or anything, so it was just James asking me out of the blue, and I thought it sounded really fun. Also, he asked at a time when I wasn’t super busy with anything, so it was a really good collaboration to do. It’s always a fun excuse to get to hang out with people you like. James came over here to New York and we recorded it.”
Nina was also one of the few non-Irish artists to contribute to The Cake Sale, the 2007 album released to benefit Oxfam Ireland. How did she get involved with the project?
“That happened because the woman who wrote the song, Emm Gryner, is one of our best friends too,” Nina explains. “And she’s now going to play keyboards with us on our tour. She wrote that song, and I think she sung it herself once. Then she asked if I was up for singing it on the record. And that’s such a gorgeous song that I couldn’t turn it down. So she came over to Malmo and recorded with me, and then I heard afterwards that that album did well too.”
Was Nina aware of any of the other Irish artists on the album?
“Hardly,” she admits. “But then when it comes to music, I’m the most un-hip person you could ever find!”
Can she imagine going back to The Cardigans at some point?
“That’s possible. We don’t have any plans right now, but we have a history of taking long breaks and still being able to patch it up again. I don’t know, to me it’s so hard to see beyond the current project I’m working on, so I’ll have to wait and see. I think we are all also at a time of life when we can’t be slaves to anything anymore. The three other guys in the band have serious families by now – there are a bunch of mini-Cardigans running around. And I have my life in New York.
“To be a slave in a pop group is a luxury problem, so I’m not saying that it’s anything negative, but we did realise that we spent every second of our lives between the ages of 18 and 28 doing nothing but The Cardigans. So we have to be a bit more flexible in how we use our time these days. But I love The Cardigans – we haven’t done our best record yet.”
The Cardigans, of course, enjoyed huge international success with the 1998 album Gran Turismo. Although the group’s follow-ups, 2003’s Long Gone Before Daylight and 2005’s Super Extra Gravity, failed to sell in similarly huge quantities, I never got the impression that this bothered Nina or her bandmates all that much.
“We sort of saw it coming,” she concurs. “After Gran Turismo, we did take one of these long breaks of four or five years. But we knew that that was necessary for our health and sanity. Because the market had changed so much in that gap, we knew that when we went back at it, it was going to be a whole different scenario. Also, maybe half-consciously, we didn’t write those kind of hits anymore. But we couldn’t force songs like ‘My Favourite Game’ and ‘Lovefool’ to come, and they wouldn’t necessarily sound good on the kind of record we wanted to do. So we knew that we were operating in a slightly different way. We wanted the amount of success that we deserved, and when you don’t make radio songs, then that’s what you get. But we felt like we did okay.”
These days Nina and Nathan are based in New York. I’d imagine it’s very different to Sweden – does she enjoy the change?
“Yeah, I love it here. Obviously, I did start coming here because I hooked up with a New Yorker, and his family’s from here and everything, so I was deeply immersed in it from the beginning. I didn’t feel like I came home, because I strongly feel that I’m such a Swede, but after what my life has become, I do feel that it fits my psyche better.”
Is that to do with feeling more like a part of a wider community of musicians and artists?
“Yeah, absolutely, but I would say even more, it’s feeling part of a community of all kinds of people. Sweden is very homogenous, for reasons. Sweden has been very untouched by other cultures for its whole history, and I felt like that wasn’t where I was coming from anymore. I’ve been exposed to so much else. Again, I love Sweden so much, but it felt like so many things were just suddenly very satisfied.”
Finally, I mention that Nathan (who has a parallel career as a successful film composer) has worked on the soundtracks for Storytelling and Palindromes, the typically bleak and morbidly funny masterworks from cult US director Todd Solondz. The filmmaker has a reputation for being a somewhat eccentric character. Did Nina meet him at any point?
“I had a really interesting encounter with him,” she recalls. “I was singing on a lot of the music for Palindromes. He had a very clear idea of what the songs should be like, and he even had a very clear idea of what the vocals should be like. So I was actually recording in a studio with Todd Solondz sitting outside, directing me more or less. Which was really amazing. He’s such a great guy; super smart and super funny and everything. And I would sing something, and he would give me a thumbs up or thumbs down. It was hilarious.”

Colonia is out now on Reveal Records