Swede dreams

“I’ve just come back from a promo tour and picked up some kind of bug,” declares Stina Nordenstam from her home in Sweden. “It probably came from foxes and dogs. It gets under your skin and gives you rashes. I had to wash everything I’ve worn for the past five weeks.”

As you might imagine, Nordenstam is not your common-or-garden artist. Aside from liaising with foxes, she has an aversion to celebrity and is possessed with a fiercely private streak that surpasses even that of Sigur Ros.
“Celebrity holds no interest for me,” she declares. “I don’t want to be famous; I think it’s weird and scary. In the beginning, the path I chose of not doing interviews was a choice I had thought a lot about. It was intuitive. When I listen to music, I think that knowing too much about an artist is kind of disturbing my relationship with the music.”
Given that Nordenstam’s own music sounds uncommonly intimate, her desire to deliver an album unobstructed by celebrity seems entirely appropriate.
“It’s a complex thing,” she muses. “It’s very important for part of me to keep my life private. I’m very intimate in my music, so it’s not like I’m showing something that isn’t private there. When you’ve seen an artist repeatedly on television, the moving image is probably the strongest impression you have of the music.”
No doubt feeling the pressure from record company personnel, Stina has finally learned to have fun with her promotional duties.
“For the video of ‘Get On With Your Life’, I talked to the director about there being some kind of movement on screen,” she recalls. “The song has a bossa nova feel, so I felt I should find some very simple dance thing for it. So I thought I would check out some belly dancing! I got in touch with a woman who taught me, and that made me think that doing this video was fun and beautiful. Now I also have my belly dancing tricks!”
Fans of Stina’s spellbinding sound have been waiting to hear the music in a live setting. It’s been something of a wait – she hasn’t played a live gig in over a decade, and appears to be in no rush to do so.
“For a time, it was definitely not an option. I couldn’t consider it because I was too preoccupied coping with life,” she claims. “A couple of years ago I began considering it because people wanted to see me. I started putting a band together and thinking about how I would approach my own songs. I realised I had a tired relationship with the songs. I tried to change the melodies. And then it became sad somehow to change things. This desire to play live somehow reflected my need to change everything – I needed a new setup somehow.”
As an alternative to touring, Nordenstam has channelled her post-album energies into creating short stories, many of which can be found on selected fan-sites.
“Creativeness has been important to me and has always been close at hand,” she contends. “A lot of the time I’ve had problems with understanding reality and things like that. Fiction has always been something I understand! There are basic rules in fiction, and in the ways you tell a story. So yes, I enjoy writing but I’m too restless. However I’m really focussed when I’m working. Hopefully that’ll change.”

Stina Nordenstam’s The World Is Saved album is out now on V2.