With their soaring guitar riffs and dark, beautiful melodies Swedish post rockers Pg.Lost are definitely a band it’s hard not to like. Their mesmerizing latest album In Never Out has become one of my favourite records of the year and one that cannot be recommended highly enough. Drop-d recently got a chance to speak to the band about their recent tour of the far east, the music scene in Sweden and more. Drop-d: So guys how did the band start?
Pg.lost: It started just as a fun thing to do on the side of our other projects. Kristian was in the band “Eskju Divine” and Mattias and Gustav in a band called “My Idea of Fun”. We all knew each other from school but in their senior year of high school Mattias and Kristian started to hang out more and more. Eventually we started to have late night jams, with Rickard the bass player from “My Idea of Fun” on drums.
When it came to our first live show we were one person short. Rickard was doing his military service at the time and couldn’t participate but we decided to do it anyway as a trio. The band now consisted of: Kristian on bass, Gustav on guitar and Mattias on drums. The show went really good and the overwhelming review in the local paper made us think that this was maybe something more than just a fun side project.
The year that followed we tried some different styles with another friend, Gustaf, as a stand in on the drums before we recruited Martin and recorded our first demo just in time for New Year’s Eve -04/-05, and that is how the line-up is today: Kristian on bass and vocals, Gustav and Mattias on guitars and Martin on drums.
Drop-d: What influenced your musical direction, as in why do you think you play the music you play?
Pg.l: We played together just for the fun of it and didn’t have any plans of making this band into something serious so we don’t know really. All of us listened to some post-rock when we started; except for Martin, everything was new to him. No one of us was comfortable with or wanted to sing, we tried that for a while later on and that didn’t work, so we played whatever came most natural to us and tried not to think so much.
That is in principle how we still make music. Influences come from everywhere.
Drop-d: Your latest album In Never Out appears to take a darker tone compared to your other releases. Why do you think this is?
Pg.l: The songs felt darker, more destructive and maybe not as hopeful as our other songs. This was not something we had planned, the songs just turned out that way.
I’m not sure if people would interpret the dark feeling as anger but I think something has made us angry when we made the songs. It’s quite liberating to be really pissed sometimes.
Drop-d: I think In Never Out is a fantastic record, can you tell us anything about the next one, when do you think it will be out?
Pg.l: Thank you for the kind words. It’s too early, even for us, to speculate how it’s going to be because we haven’t really started with the next album yet. We only know what we want to do differently from the other records in terms of the actual making of it. The direction of it, and the production we don’t know. Maybe more playful and daring or maybe we’ll try to make it even darker than In Never Out.
It’ll have to take the time it takes but hopefully we’ll have something finished by late 2011 early 2012.
Until then we want to promote a compilation album that we’re going to be on together with a bunch of other great bands. We got contacted by Mirza from the band Arms & Sleepers, whom we have played with a couple of times in Europe. He asked if we wanted to be a part of this project called “Music Against Hunger” and we said we would be honoured. Here’s some more info about that:
https://usa.wfp.org/campaign/music-against-hunger
Drop-d: The band recently toured the far east, what was that like? Was it difficult to organise?
Pg.l: It was all fixed by the tour manager we had and it worked out extremely well. But then again he worked for like four months making it happen so… All we had to do was get the visas, buy the flight tickets there and back and get him as much material for promotion as we could.
We didn’t know at all what to expect so we tried to keep our expectations low and think that if it would be like shit we at least would have toured and seen China, something that not to many bands in our genre have done before.
Drop-d: What is the music scene like in Sweden at the moment?
Pg.l: Maybe we can’t really give it justice because we live in a rather small city with a limited supply of live shows and innovative artists. It’s different in the bigger cities like Stockholm or Gothenburg. Many times that is how it feels; that Sweden lacks really innovative artists. Something gets really popular and soon everything’s starts to sound the same. Well, it’s not only our hometown that’s small, the whole country is. It’s like it is everywhere I guess. The music that gets most space in media gets most space everywhere.
It’s of course not all bad. Sweden has generally been quite good at producing high quality music and bands since long and that doesn’t die out just like that.
Drop-d: Have you ever played Ireland before?
Pg.l: No. We actually haven’t been to Ireland… not yet!
Drop-d: Any plans to play over here in the future?
Pg.l: We have plans to play all over… so of course we’d love to do that but nothing is planned at the moment. If you have any good contacts, hook us up!
Drop-d: What bands are you guys listening to?
Pg.l: Our taste in music is quite diverse within the band. Of course we listen and like a lot of the same bands but at the same time some of us like bands/music that the others just can’t stand.
(The band later emailed on a list, nice guys!!)
Martin
Mutiny Within – Mutiny Within
Opeth – Watershed
Copeland - You are my sunshine
Mattias
Beach House - Teen Dream
Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record
Kidcrash – Snacks
Gustav
Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall
Villagers – Becoming a Jackal
Adebisi Shank – This is the Second Album of a Band Called Adebisi Shank
Kristian
Black Keys – Brothers
Radiohead – Ok Computer
Queens of the Stone Age – Rated R
Drop-d: Any advice for new bands starting out?
Pg.l: Make music that you really want to make and don’t compromise. Not said that you shouldn’t listen to each other or what other people say but don’t stop until your gut feeling says it is good. And focus on the music primarily, especially in the beginning. If other people like it then things will start to move on its own…
Drop-d: Cheers pg.lost!!
