Call it the Scandinavian Invasion.
New sounds keep bubbling up from the snowy expanses of the barren Nordic lands like so many glacial hot springs, forcing listeners around the world to take note as stridently original music joins oil, IKEA furniture and patterned sweaters as a main export of the region. These Viking musicians include starry-eyed songwriters and raunchy garage-rockers alike, all intent on raping and pillaging their way onto the American independent music scene with varying degrees of subtlety.
Scandinavia has only become a hipster hotbed as of late. Back in the day (the '70s), Swedish popsters ABBA were the most successful pop group ever to emerge from northern Europe, selling hundreds of millions of records worldwide and topping the U.S. charts in 1976 with the epic catchiness of "Dancing Queen." But there's a limit to how hip you can be while listening to songs like "Mamma Mia" or "Fernando."
After ABBA, Sweden was known mainly for death metal acts with names like Entombed and Dismember, while Norway was famous for the black metal of bands like Dimmu Borgir. The best-known musical ambassador of the region was probably neoclassical metalhead Yngwie Malmsteen, the leather-trousered guitar virtuoso who has toured with Steve Vai and Joe Satriani.
More recently, however, debates over subgenres of metal have given way to debates over subgenres of indie rock in Scandanavia as a number of influential artists have begun to capture the softer side of the Viking lands.
Björk
Björk was one of the first Nordic artists to achieve fame and fortune (at least by avant-garde pop standards) in Europe and America. Hailing from Reykjavik, Iceland, Björk (whose full name is Björk Gudmundsdóttir) studied classical piano as a child before making her self-titled pop-covers debut at age 11, which was a hit in her native Iceland.
Björk began to make a splash outside her homeland with her first solo effort, 1993's electronica-tinged Debut. The album is an aggressive, almost bizarre combination of clubthumping dance beats and avant-garde vocals. Half Janis Joplin, half Madonna, Björk wields her girlish voice like a broadsword, plunging recklessly into each note.
The album's sample-heavy production sounds like Björk snuck into the recording sessions for a Janet Jackson album and used her band, especially the guys playing the synth/guitar "keytars," to create punchy, near-dissonant backgrounds for her breathy vocals.
The Aphex Twin-ish synthesized rhythms and melodic percussion on "Crying" seem to clash with the soaring pop chorus, but Björk pulls it off without a backward glance.
Her oddly accented delivery, which stems from both her place of birth and unabashed vocal stylings, and her penchant for half-poetic, half-confessional lyrics can make your first time with Björk difficult. In fact, her 2004 effort Medulla is nothing but vocals, making it even more intimidating. Take her for what she is — a refreshingly naíve, yet somehow wise Icelandic oddity — and you'll do fine.
Sigur Rós
"Icelandic oddity" is probably the best way to describe Björk's contemporaries Sigur Rós as well. There's something about that rugged land that incites the creation of music to fill in the hidden crevasses between genres that nobody else knew existed. The band's lush, ambient take on pop music doesn't fit comfortably into any specific style, combining the plodding rhythms and ethereal vocals of Arcade Fire with a symphonic sensibility that treats each instrument as one small part of the sweeping musical vision showcased on their first platinum release (in Iceland), 1999's Ágétis Byrjun.
The liquid voice of Jon Thor Birgisson, which can often be found floating above the band's dense, steady beat in an incredibly high register, sets Sigur Rós apart from orchestral-rock contemporaries like Godspeed You! Black Emperor. And as for lyrics, Birgisson has perhaps taken his verse even farther into the unexplored northern wastes than Björk, inventing an entirely new language (Hopelandic) to convey the band's otherworldly message of absolutely pure melodies and delicate crescendos.
Whether the vocals are in Icelandic, Hopelandic or are indecipherable altogether, you won't be taking away any lyrical meanings from Sigur Rós's catalogue, since Birgisson treats his voice like another instrument anyway. On their 2005 release Takk, the band members continue to merge their instruments (which include violin and flute) into the steady stream of the collective music, bringing each song to a rousing climax simply through persistence. Sigur Rós is in no rush to unleash their potent form of musical beauty upon the masses, sedately building reverberating crescendos and hushed lows.
While the group hasn't achieved the same amount of persistent industry buzz as their sister-in-arms Björk, their quiet revolution, like each of their songs, continues to grow.
The Hives
While many of the artists in the Nordic wave aim for the epic majesty and quiet grandeur of the mellower side of rock and pop, Swedish post-punks the Hives have less subtle ambitions. If Sigur Rós's deft musical touch is that of a surgeon, the Hives' is that of an axe-heaving barbarian, or at least a skinny white kid with a baseball bat and a lot of attitude. The band's main objective (and one at which it usually succeeds) seems to be to systematically rock you until the blood runs out your ears, even as you dance away obliviously.
These five lads from Fagersta seek to be the "Main Offender" of their 2000 release Veni Vidi Vicious, which spawned the rollicking single "Hate to Say I Told You So." Their 2004 effort Tyrannosaurus Hives isn't long on getting to the point, with 12 songs clocking in at a grand total of 30 minutes. The point being, of course, bare-bones garage rocking you can't help but thrash to.
The album single "Walk Idiot Walk" features all the tenets of the Hives sound: tight guitar interplay, tremolo bass playing and a whole lot of unrestrained yelling that's likely to result in future lymph node problems for Howlin' Pelle Almqvist, but not before the band conquers the U.S. as it has already begun to do.
Dungen
Fellow Swedes Dungen (doon-yen) are the countryside to the Hives' urban jungle, with a pastoral pastiche of sounds ranging from '60s rock and psychedelia to Swedish folk music. Rooted in the sonic experimentation of front man Gustav Ejstes, who retreated to the basement of his grandmother's woodland farm to come up with the group's loose, freeform sound, Dungen sing only in their native tongue and have only recently made it across the pond. 2004's Ta Det Lugnt, which means "Take It Easy," was re-released in the U.S. in 2005, but the band remains a music fan's type of music, laboring in relative obscurity.
The haunting string harmonies of the intro to the slow-grooving "Du Är För Fin För Mig" encapsulate better than any other music the stillness of a winter fjord. But the band channels Hendrix on the hard-hitting jam tacked onto the end of the song, proving just how international their music really is.
Mew
The members of Denmark's Mew began making music together in the seventh grade, and their shared experience is evident on the band's winding progressions and fractionalized rhythms, which they execute with uncanny precision. Mew's brand of ethereal pop rock seems to come straight out of the Elven forests of a Tolkien tale, and the dream visions contained on 2005's (2006 in the U.S.) And the Glass Handed Kites evoke something that's not too far off.
Jonas Bjerre sings like a eunuch over a wall of clean guitars, echoing synths and thick drums that alternate between disco stomp and Tool-esque time signature riffs. The vocals on tracks like "Saviours Of Jazz Ballet (Fear Me, December)" reverberate like the Vienna Boys Choir, but Mew underscores the childlike melodies with a dark and twisted element that's scary even in its most joyful moments.
This vanguard represents a few of Scandinavian artists that have been taking underground music circles by storm, slowly breaking into the American music scene. And even if you're not sure you're ready for a Viking-style onslaught of majestic rock music, this wave of the Scandinavian Invasion deserves a listen. It's a hell of a lot more exciting than ABBA.
Alec Luhn is a sophomore intending to major in journalism. Send any questions, comments or tales from the land of ice and snow to [email protected].
