The Re-Birth Of Carl

I just made the songs, one after another – and allowed myself to do whatever I wanted to do with them

So here is the promised interview with Carl Norén. You know each other. From several interviews and generally the Sugarplum/Mando connection. It’s very easy to talk about Carl’s very successful solo record ‚Owls’. A conversation, in which Carl expresses himself in a very open way about the future of Sugarplum Fairy, and doesn’t hold back with his opinion about his brother’s „Viktorious“ – solo project. 

Hello Carl, what have you been doing lately since one saw you the last with Sugarplum Fairy? 

Well I practically worked the whole last year – When was the last time we saw each other? 2 years ago?

Yes I think that’s right. 

At our last show in Munich? 

And again, when you supported Mando in the Olympia hall. We missed each other when you were touring with Johnossi. But I saw you at the concert they had to cancel, because John was sick. 

Oh right – yes I was sick back then too. Those have been bad days for everyone involved. 

You after all went through with your show. 

Yes, I never cancelled one single show. 

You don’t have to scream as much as John does. 

No, of course not, it’s much harder for him. He also parties more than i do, hehe. But I practically worked the entire last year, and just since January I have a little time and take each day as it comes and look for new inspirations for new songs. 

Did you work that much on your solo record, or did you also have a job?

Both. I worked on the record at night. During the day I started to study and also worked in a restaurant. I was in action 7 days a week. 

I read about the studies. Literature, right?

Yes, I started with this now. I am doing it for a year and I really want to focus on it. But we (Sugarplum Fairy) want to first of all meet again and plan our future. How to continue. The solo record was a good thing to pass the time, maybe a little obvious but I don’t mind. The literature studies were more to kill the boredom. To have a little fun, and literature is perfect fort hat, because it’s interesting and not that hard. 

Who are your favorite writers, and do you write something else besides songs? Short stories maybe?

I concentraded on russian writers, my first class was about russian literature. I just like them most – although I also like Camus, but besides of him I practically only read books from russian writers. My favorite is Chekhov, he is really good. I don’t write that much myself. I write my blog, my songs, from time to time poems but those only in swedish. I would like to write longer stuff, but for this I am lacking the inspiration and attention span. 

Maybe the whole pop – song shape is the right thing for you. 

Yes – or it made me incapable to write longer things. It’s pretty easy to write a pop song, and this probably makes you as writer impatient and lazy. A pop song is much easier to write than a novel.

When you write poems in swedish – it wasn’t planned to write the solo record in swedish? There are many examples of swedish frontmen whose solo records are in swedish. 

No, that would’ve been a too big step. I never really thought about that. At the beginning I didn’t want to go on tour solo, but there I was on tour with Mando Diao. And there on the other hand it would’ve been weird to sing swedish in front of a german audience. Eventhough english is not your mother tongue, english ist he language to which you have a connection. And since I played my first solo shows in english, it was clear that the disc would be in english. I have in mind to make a swedish record one day. This should be a classical, traditional swedish folk disc. But it’s not an easy language to write in. It can be very naive – I think you have to find a middle way between pretentious and naive.

Your Sugarplum – drummer Kristian Gidlund writes  screenplays. Could you imagine doing something completely different than music? 

Well, writing screenplays, writing in the first place that is not that far away from music. If i wanted to do something else I’d probably start to study Biology or something like that. Because I think...if you do something creative it is hard to judge yourself if it’s good. You try it but you don’t know if you after all just waste your time. I wouldn’t dare to sacrifice a year of my time to write a novel or screenplay. It would be more safe to get a good education, so you study for three years but you get a job afterwards. But on the other hand – you never know if inspiration kicks in. 

Your solo records differs from Sugarplum Fairy in so far that the music is calmer. Is this simply because there is no band behind or were you just calmer/quieter during this time? 

Unintentionally maybe. Three years ago I was in phase in which I mostly listened to loud pop hits from the 80s. After that I had a phase in which I rediscovered the songwriters of the 70s, like Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Nick Drake. After that I was in a hard hiphop phase. Meaning: When I recorded the record I mostly listened to hiphop. When I was writing the songs however, i was listening to 80s pop and to 70s songwriters. And somehow all of this has found its way to the record. 

It is of course something completely different if you have a band around you, but it’s nothing i thought about in the studio. I just made the songs, one after another – and allowed myself to do whatever I wanted to do with them.

I ask of course, because what you’re doing generally runs in Sugarplum – direction. Your brother however makes solo music (as Viktorious) which is the exact opposite of Sugarplum. 

Hmmm.

What’s your opinion on this? I find it..bold? But I haven’t wrapped my mind around it yet. I mean, respect for having the guts to try something completely different but he will snub many Sugarplum – fans with this.  

Yes, yes. But I think it’s not really HIS thing but a record label thing. He writes those songs with professional songwriters and different producers. It’s not his sound, it’s the sound of other people. If he went tot he studio alone, his record would’ve sounded more like Sugarplum than it does now. So it’s the sound of someone else but with Victor’s voice. That is why it sounds so different if you ask me. Someone tries to make modern music – for him. Victor writes with other authors on this record – with Sugarplum Fairy he only wrote for himself. That’s the difference. 

Do you think he’s not happy with this? Does he let someone push him into a direction to which he doesn’t belong? 

I don’t know. I do believe that he does what he wants to, but that he might regret it later – or maybe not. It’s not easy in the music industry at the moment. Even if you’re part of a successful band like Sugarplum you can’t keep up your income. You have to tour a hell of a lot and if you divide every dollar in between five people there’s not much left for anyone. You have to come up with something new, if you want to remain in the game. The music changes. When we started with Sugarplum Fairy, The Strokes scooped the market and rock music was the new thing – yet again of course, but guitars were in. Near our end, barely a person on this planet made such a sound. A few bands were left but rock became smaller – especially in Sweden. This will change again, but it’s just hard to keep a band up and running when you get older. 

Now you just said: „near our end’ – is Sugarplum Fairy history? I thought you were just taking a break? I thought you wanted to meet again?

 Yes.But it is the end of an era. Maybe we come back but you don’t know how we will sound like. I think we will come back as Sugarplum and not as Sugarplum Fairy. Sugarplum Fairy are over, but Sugarplum could still exist. I think it’s important to find the right music for your age. We have to see to where a new record could lead us. 

Concerning Victor’s music I prepared a hobby-phychology-thesis: Victor maybe has a sort of urge, as he is the youngest of you Noréns, to distinguish himself. Sugarplum was standing in Mando Diao’s shadow – maybe it was more important to him to emancipate himself and you can handle this better than he can? 

There could be truth in it – but on the other hand I think you really shouldn’t read into Victor as person based on his music, because he doesn’t write nor produce the songs himself. It’s somebody else’s imagination how it should sound. Naturally he was the one who agreed on this. But he still listens tot he same music and wears the same clothes. 

Do you talk to each other about your music? Or is this something you don’t talk about?

Exactly. If it’s just the two of us we do different things and don’t talk about the music we’re making. I mean let’s just see where it leads him to, and if he has fun with it. We just developped into two directions. When I started with the record I didn’t have a record deal. I wanted to hold it small and indie and just do whatever I wanted to, to not depend on Hits or record companies. With hi mit was the other way around, a label was there right away, so you approach this differently. Well, we don’t talk that much about it 

When you wrote your solo songs – did you also reserve some for Sugarplum? Is there a difference between solo songs and band songs? 

Yes, there is a song on ‚Owls’ which was meant to be for Sugarplum: „That’s The Way I Like It“. But then i thought that this ne would be good fort he record, if there is a song  on the record with some more peppiness – especially because it wasn’t clear if and when there will be another Sugarplum record. If I think of Sugarplum, I think of faster, happier songs – on the other hand there were songs like „Caroline“ or „In Berlin“ on the last band record, these could’ve also been solo songs. 

Will you have a backing band for presenting your songs live? As support of Johnossi one has only seen you with an acoustic guitar. 

I want to try to mix it. I am just setting up a band, we’re rehearsing and played live twice, but this has only been three, four songs. On the other hand the plan was to do it alone. I like the little frame and it’s also a different feeling when you’re on your own while playing live. I want to keep that feeling and just see what I can do with it. The record however sounds very ‚bandish’ so maybe I do need one. We’ll see. 

I’ve seen you as support act of Johnossi – there the audience waits patiently for the main act and isn’t really in the mood to let the guy with the acoustic guitar in. But you didn’t have it easy this night. 

Yes this was pretty hard. Being support act of a rock band like Johnossi. Their audience consists of much more guys than girls. They almost come from hard rock. And then i show up with my ballads – that was hard. But you have to go through this. It would’ve been much harder to play after them. It was definitely harder as support of Johnossi than of Mando.

Maybe more have recognized you there. 

Definitely - but I think almost every Johnossi fan started up as Mando fan. And the Mando shows were so huge so many people didn't recognize me. There were 8'000 people at every show, with Johnossi it has only been 300-800.

Let's talk about a few songs of the record. The two singles "The Anger" and "Going Out Tonight" you for sure picked out with motives.

Yes - both songs first existed as a ballade just with an acoustic guitar, so there are two different versions of'em. 

Yes I saw that - the acoustic version is a B-side of the other single..

Those two songs were practically the first ones, I wrote for the solo record. They were easy to write, although such simple songs are usually the hardest. The songs that just come to you - but you never know when! The lyrics of the songs are very honest. This is also hard, because you want to change them later. Because they reveal too much, because you feel completely naked. So you sit in front of the lyrics and think: Shit, i now need some 'Dylan-style' metaphors with which I can overpaint this honesty. But the lyrics are so good, because they are so honest. I wrote "The Anger" when I was sick once. It still has some sort of groove but a dark mood. The lyrics - it's very honest as I said before. I had many fights with my friends during this time, I didn't talk to any of them at this time. But I was tired of this so I wrote this song about the feeling of having enough of all these fights. 

You wrote those songs acoustically and then arranged and recorded with Mats(Björke, Keyboarder of Mando Diao). How did the process go? 

Well Mats was the Sound engineer, I was the producer. The arrangements base on my ideas but I always went to him when I had a question. Mats is really great to work with, because he's very positive and is always honest. Of course he was also in for a creative idea exchange, but it's my ideas on which the record is built up. 

So I must have been informed falsely.  I read that Mats was together with CJ (Fogelklou bass player of Mando Diao) the producer.

CJ was involved at the beginning, he played bass on the entire record. And there was another sound engineer helping out, we were a good team. But the songwriting is an important part of producing especially when you rewrite the songs again. And this was my part.  

Slowly we come loser to the end of my 30 minutes. Some simple questions: What are you looking forward the most in 2011?

I look forward to keep on working a lot. To just let the things flow and see what happens. I am looking forward to the summer to play live. 

Which is you favorite record at the moment?

I really Ilke James Blake. I just listened to the record again this morning. It sounds really good. But in general I try to listen to something else every day, keep my ears busy. 

… and I always end my Interviews with an anekdote. Did anything funny happen during the recordings? 

Ach, it's always hard for me to answer such questions. When you're done with a record you can't really remember a thing. 

But sure - there is a story! We were mixing the record already and were done with a mix for "The Anger" which sounded really good. I had to master the song and called Mats: "Can you bring over the mix, it's on your hard disk." And Mats said: "Oh dear God, I hit the data processor today. It fell down and since then the hard disk is ruined." Me: "oh man, this was the only copy, we have to save this hard disk!" Mats said: "i will clear that!". He went online and googled "hard disks repair service". He called the first adress he found. He couldn't hand in the hard disk there - these people came by car to pick the disk up. Even after Mats couldn't come over or email the firm, he could just call. It turned out that it was a top secret firm which only works for the government. Mats either had a russian girl called Olga on the line or a british guy called Mike. This firm had a cleaning room and when they were in there, he didn't catch them either. Those people worked 48 hours on repairing the files, i slowly got really mad at Mats - but then they finally were done and delivered the Mix just in time. And then the bill came: 3'000 Euros! Mats didn't check the prices before. Man, we were so exhausted. That was the entire budget for the record! So: You should inform yourselves about the prices first. And you shouldn't hire a firm that usually works for the government!! It's a given that they are expensive!

Man, that was a really good anecdote - although i am sorry for you of course.

Seriously. We were handling the money so carefully for the recordings and then on the last day something like THIS happens! Well, anyways it is the most expensive track on the record.

Now my time is really over - Thanks a lot, and see you soon and good luck with the record!

Thanks,take care!

source: http://hennissey.piranha.tv