The Hives, The Hives, The Hives. For the small army of outstanding Swedish bands that are now making an impact in the United States and elsewhere, an interviewer uttering those two words can bring on acid indigestion. They're all immediately compared to The Hives because The Hives made such a huge splash, kicking down the door for the others to go through, and, naturally and most importantly, because... they're from Sweden. They must sound like them, and probably live next door to them, too, right?

Sweden may not be large, but it has different coasts with different lifestyles, different musical scenes, affluent areas and working class areas, just like America. Their government is socialist, and many people there feel conformity is being pushed upon them. On the west coast, in the city of Gothenburg, life can look very bleak to a teenager who wants more out of life than a union job on the docks. Rock and roll in Gothenburg means potential escape. Usually, it means a few hours of escape, then back to work, as most bands stay put. They can't all be Division Of Laura Lee.

DOLL, they're affectionately called. Of all the bands to come through that open door into the U.S. and beyond, DOLL may be the most astoundingly talented. Their music pulses with your heartbeat, goes with the flow of your anxiety attack, brings you back down, buckles you in and then whispers some scary things in your ear. The songs can be very dark, but they still have rays of hope and light shining through. Per Stalberg (vocals, guitar), Jonas Gustavsson (vocals, bass), David Ojala (guitar), and Hakan Johansson (drums) have a perfect chemistry.

Black City, their CD on Black Heart/Epitaph, backed up the legend of their live shows and silenced those who thought it would never transfer to the studio. Punk tunes like "Number One," "Access Identity," "Pretty Electric" and "Need To Get Some" attacked, psychedelic tunes such as "I Guess I'm Healed" slipped into the subconscious and painted pictures, and the lyrics stuck. Division Of Laura Lee makes music, not product.

As Christmas approached, I spoke with Per Stalberg via telephone. The band had just returned to Sweden and he was visiting family for the holidays before going back on the road for another long leg of the tour. In some of the interviews I'd seen while researching for this, Per had seemed pretty cocky. During our conversation, even the boldest statements were said in a matter-of-fact way that seemed more like confidence than cockiness. We began with a little bit of social awareness.

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Cosmik: Americans tend to see Sweden as a little blurb on the globe and think of it as a city more than a country, especially now that we're becoming aware of a lot of bands from there. What can you tell us about your home town, Gothenburg, and how it might play into who you've become and what the band does?

Per: It's a working class city, very down to earth. It's pretty much like the Swedish version of Manchester (England), kind of. It's where the ocean is. It's very grey and a bit dirty, and it has a lot of labor unions. I don't know what it did to our music, though. I think growing up on the west coast of Sweden is very different from the east coast, because we're not living in a dream. We're trying to build the dream. Everybody from the west coast is down to earth, they know what they're doing, and they're ready to offer a lot for the chance to do what they're good at. I guess that's why all the good bands from Sweden are from the west coast. Too bad not that many of them have become famous in the U.S. yet.

Cosmik: It's strange how that's worked out, isn't it? There's a lot of image in the east, but so much unnoticed substance in the west, aside from your band and a few others breaking through.

Per: Yeah, I've said it before in other interviews, but I don't know any bands from Gothenburg who bought their suits and bought their attitudes. It's all there from the beginning. You're born with it.

Cosmik: Uh huh, I gathered that from interviews, that you're a little bit disgusted with some of the bands, maybe.

Per: I don't know... I think it's alright, I just want people to know it's not us, you know what I mean?

Cosmik: They won't get very far into the CD before they'll know that's not what you're about.

Per: Yeah.

Cosmik: I've read several interviews with the bands that have come over here from Sweden, and one of the things I see over and over is remarks about the Swedish government trying to keep control of the people, trying to encourage conformity. Do you feel there's anything to that?

Per: I guess it is like that, but it seems like a lot of governments are working that way. They want to control the people because that's what it's all about. Yeah, that's how I felt where I grew up. I didn't want to be controlled. I felt like an outsider. I didn't fit in any classes, and I didn't fit in school because I was not the regular kid, and I think there are a lot of people in bands who used to be kids like that, who felt outside of the system. They understood things that other people just swallowed and believed in.

Cosmik: Yeah, I guess that's pretty universal after all.

Per: Like here, it's all about education and working in the factory for 40 years to help other people get richer, in a way that's almost like slavery. Or I think it is for artists and musicians, because they always want to do their own thing. And I don't say that Sweden is a bad country. It's very good. It's easy to make money here, and it's easy to live without working, but still, if you're an artist it's easy to feel like you're trapped in and being controlled. And you don't like to be controlled. I think it's the same thing all over the world.

Cosmik: It's interesting, though, that the government would pay bands just to practice. Is it true that they used to do that?

Per: Yeah, we have all these union things and we have a socialistic government in Sweden, they were helping bands out a lot... I don't know how to explain it in English because you don't have anything like it in the U.S., but it's called Studie, and you join one of those, and fill out papers saying who is in the band, and you need to have a contact person, then you just rehearse and put down hours. And for that you get paid. They pay for your practice place, so I think that about 90% of all the bands in the small cities in Sweden have their own practice places. You can buy strings, you can buy an amp, save up money, do whatever you want, you know?

Cosmik: Now a lot of those bands are making decent money, and a handful are doing very well in the States and everywhere else, and they're all taxpayers in Sweden, so I guess it worked out for the government AND the bands.

Per: It's a good thing, and I think it's one of the reasons why there's so many bands in a small country like this, but I still think the weather has something to do with it, too. And, as I said before, all the government bullshit, you know... some weirdos out there just don't want to be controlled. I felt like that since I was 10 years old. I just wanted to do my music. I didn't care about fuckin' working or doing as my mother told me. Sweden's such a small country, though, you can almost feel the control here, where in other countries you don't even notice.

Cosmik: Right. America's so huge you feel 100% free, but we've got fingerprints on file, CIA, FBI, religious right, all kinds of things.

Per: It's so huge a lot of people in America just go with the flow. They don't even bother. They think what they hear on the TV and what the President is saying are true. In Sweden it's different. Everybody's into politics. I wouldn't say we're smarter, but it's different. People seem to read more about what's going on in the world. If I ask a young kid in the U.S., he might not even know what Sweden is. And here I am, I've been talking English since I was 10 years old while I've lived in that country called Sweden. That says a lot. I think we're a bit more informed about what's happening out there, and I think that's why a lot of bands from our country are very political, as well.

Cosmik: That's one of the things that interests me about bands like International Noise Conspiracy. I guess they have the suits, but it's part of the political statements. And you guys, too, make your statements.

Per: We're very political. In a different way, maybe, but there are so many other [Swedish] bands doing it, too.

Cosmik: Comparisons to The Hives and The Strokes, of course, are ludicrous, but you have to put up with them all the time from American and English publications. Everybody compares bands to other bands, but...

Per: I guess they want to sell issues of their magazines, and it's easy to compare. American people have their eyes and ears open for Swedish music now, and I think The Hives did that for us, you know what I mean, and I'm happy for that, but band-wise, we have nothing in common. We are way older than them. We've been doing this for a lot longer, and I can't see why we're a 'garage rock' band. We're a band for the future, doing what we always did, you know? Rock music. We don't want to be anything except Division Of Laura Lee.

Cosmik: There's no comparison whatsoever.

Per: No, not really, except they're from Sweden... and they probably liked us when they were young. (Laughs)

Cosmik: What I really wanted to know, though, was about inside Sweden. There's no novelty aspect there, so who do the Swedish music press tend to compare you to?

Per: I think... Soundtrack Of Our Lives. We're from the same city, and they're almost like our older brothers. The bass player produced our records. It wasn't easy for them, too, I mean we're not really sounding like them either, but the press loves to put bands in a box, like put them with some other bands. It's fine for me, you know, I just want people to listen to our music, but it's always good when people try to find their own thing about us. We're not really trying to be anything else. We never did. I can understand why they compare us to Soundtrack Of Our Lives, because they are like our older brothers, and we always hang out together here in town and the press in Sweden see that. They see us at parties together and they think "aha!"

Cosmik: They assume it's a coordinated scene and sound.

Per: Yeah. Gothenburg is like New York in the 60s and 70s. The scene is like a big community, with all the bands helping each other, and everybody's friends.

Cosmik: We've got to get Soundtrack out here. I like that kind of an ethereal mist around rock music.

Per: Have you heard a band called Citizen Bird?

Cosmik: I've heard about them, but I haven't heard them yet.

Per: Check them out. They're also from Gothenburg. They're the best band in Sweden. They're pretty new in America. In Sweden, they're called Silver Bullet, but they can't be called that in the U.S., so they're called Citizen Bird.

Cosmik: Um... because of Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band? Tell me it's not that.

Per: Something like that.

Cosmik: I'll TRY my best to get through the questions you're sick of as quick as possible.I'll spare you from having to tell the story of the band's name for the millionth time. As I understand it, it's just a name. Laura Lee is a soul singer from the 60s and 70s, and the Division Of part is just something one of you saw on a cardboard box, and it sounded cool. Close enough?

Per: Pretty much. We thought Division Of sounded fucking awesome, and we just wanted to add some soul to our name, so we brought in Laura Lee.

Cosmik: Okay. Here's what I keep wondering. Have you heard from Laura Lee? Or her attorneys?

Per: No, not yet, but probably soon if we're gonna get big in the U.S., they're probably gonna sue the ass off us.

Cosmik: Either that or do a show with you.

Per: Well, I'd definitely do a show with her! I'd definitely want to talk to her. You never know, it could happen.

Cosmik: Do you get many people trying to get you to define the band's name so it makes some kind of sense?

Per: Sometimes, but I think people don't really understand our name. I think it's an awesome name, but what the hell does it mean?

Cosmik: But that's the cool thing, isn't it? How you can basically toss some words together and have it come out to be the perfect name for a band.

Per: Yeah, we didn't really understand that in the beginning. We were like "Yeah, that's a pretty good name, I guess." Then everybody told us "That's a great name," and we'd think "well okay... maybe."

Cosmik: Did you realize at the time that the initials would come out DOLL?

Per: It took us two years to understand that. Some other guy, in a magazine, did that. He shortened it down and said "Look! It says DOLL!" Oh my God, we didn't think about that at all. We didn't even try to shorten it down before that. We were all very active with other bands in the beginning, we didn't really have much time.

Cosmik: For stuff like thinking about acronyms, anyway. Not a high priority.

Per: We did record together a lot, though.

Cosmik: There ya go. Work on the sound first, figure out acronyms later. I'm curious to know if there was a vision of this sound before the band was formed, if the players were brought together specifically because they were right for that sound, or if it just happened.

Per: It just happened. I mean, we were all kind of artsy-fartsy guys, and we were somehow trying to put together an art collective when we met each other. Pretty soon we said "Fuck the paint, let's play music." I've been in a lot of bands before, but this band has something unique. We were not doing very good songs back then, but we were amazing when we were together as a live act, so we kept doing that for a long time. We recorded a couple 7-inchers, a compilation CD... We were on so many other compilations. Then we just totally went for it. We said "Let's do it. We're good enough to do this and take it far." So we just quit work, and we gave ourselves a year and said if we weren't signed after that year we quit, and it only took four months and we're signed.

Cosmik: That's freakin' amazing.

Per: It is. I think a lot of bands have a story like that, but...

Cosmik: Uh, not a four month story. Not a lot of bands. (Laughs)

Per: (Shy laugh) No... Maybe not, but we were a lucky band. I mean, we are a very good live band, and a very good band [in general], and we kinda knew that, we didn't doubt in ourselves. We were nice to the record labels, they were not nice to us. We knew that everybody would [want to] sign us.

Cosmik: I read the story about the festival you played at, about how you had what you thought was a crappy show, came off stage all upset and got a record contract. Geez.

Per: Yeah yeah. (Laughs) That's actually true. We played a shitty show and they were actually fucking thrilled. We smashed everything that show. We destroyed our guitars and had to go buy new ones the day after. It was a terrible show. We argued for like two hours after the show. Then a couple record labels come to us and said "You wanna get signed?" and we said "Hell no!" Then we started talking, and we did.

Cosmik: What made you pick Burning Heart Records?

Per: Well, I wouldn't trust any record label, but Burning Heart and Epitaph are labels that actually like music. They're not only after the money. They need us to be a product, in a way, but we can do that however we want. It's up to us. The other labels were very ass-kissing and we didn't trust them.

Cosmik: Labels a band could disappear on?

Per: Well... I don't think we would, but there was just something nasty. We told them to fuck off and we took Burning Heart instead.

Cosmik: Probably a very smart move.

Per: I think it was, yeah.

Cosmik: Having the link to Epitaph in the States is definitely a good thing.

Per: Yeah, it's a good start and I like it a lot. It's going good for us in the States.

Cosmik: It's interesting trying to review your CD, at least at first, because there's an urge to use the word "retro," but there's so much originality and so much update there that the word doesn't work. Was there a desire to avoid the "retro" label?

Per: No... We're actually more retro on that record than we ever were before, but not on purpose. You know, we like old music, we like new music, we just want our own thing and it became what it became. It's a lot of soul into that record. We really tried to do something special, and I think we succeeded. We had a hard time recording it. We were in the studio for two months, giving it everything we had. There's a lot of feeling and emotion all through that record. We just wanted to do our best.

Cosmik: On the harder-edged songs there's a tighter structure for the vocals, I think, but in the verses of the more ethereal songs, like "The Truth Is Fucked," you have a lot of room to experiment, talking or singing. Do you stretch out live and take songs in different directions?

Per: I did before we recorded it. We're doing a lot of stuff with our live songs, but I think that song, now, is pretty much the same live. It's one of those songs that I think the version on the record is so good I want to try to do it that way. "The Truth Is Fucked" is one of my favorite songs off the record, also the first song we recorded for it. I wrote it in March of 2000.

Cosmik: It's one of my favorites, too, but this album is a rarity for me because there isn't a song I don't like. I picked it number one for the year without even hesitating.

Per: There's not a song you don't like?

Cosmik: At this point, I pretty much just do interviews with artists that I listen to over and over, you know? Yeah, not one song I don't like.

Per: Well that's good. That's how I feel, too, because we wanted to do a record that has a strength. We didn't want to repeat ourselves, playing the same song twenty times. We wanted the record to be exciting, because that's kind of not happening all that often anymore. It's always like there's two good songs on a record, then it's done. We wanted to do something different. I shouldn't say we tried to do a good record, because we had it in ourselves, but everything we say and play is from our hearts. We really try to be honest with our music, and to the people. It came out good, but we've been doing a couple new songs, and I promise you the next record's going to be - if it's possible - ten times better.

Cosmik: I have some songs I wanted to ask you about, starting with the title track. Another favorite, but I've been kind of torn trying to figure out exactly what it's about. "Black City" has a lot of lines that seem to be about the electronic world, the Net. I was wondering if you would shed some light on that. No pun intended, honest.

Per: I really torn about that one, too, because Jonah did the lyrics on that one.

Cosmik: Have you ever asked? I mean "Thousands killed on the Internet" is pretty heavy stuff.

Per: I think it's about how the societies work and all about the city stress, and how come everything's getting so fast and it's so important for people to make it in the world. I think the whole record has a context, and it's very much about how it's tough growing up in a place you didn't feel comfortable in, but I think the song "Black City" is about city stress and daily routines you don't really want to take [part] in. And I think it's about the Internet, about education, how do you want to have your controlled or control other people's lives. I'm not really sure because he's very quiet when it comes to trying to explain his lyrics, but I heard him talk about this in interviews, and I think he's just a bit afraid for how fast everything's going.

Cosmik: A lot of the imagery, from the title down to the lyrics to the sounds, seems to be about darkness without hopelessness. It's definitely about heavy places, but there's always a sense of possibilities. It's like there's always a lifeline thrown in there.

Per: Because that's what we felt when we went through our teen lives - We had a shitty time growing up and we wanted to talk about it, we hadn't talked to anybody about it before, so we made a record that... I wouldn't say it's a depressing record, but it has a dark edge to it. I guess that's how we are. We know what's going on out there and we're not really comfortable always, you know? Seems like a lot of bands today are living a lie, because I think rock and roll music should be dangerous.

Cosmik: Still, the always-in-vogue thing is to say things are hopeless, and you don't.

Per: No. It's not hopeless. We want to give the people the reality, but nothing is hopeless.

Cosmik: One example of what I'm talking about is that "Trapped In" starts with "I wish someday things would get better," but moves on to "I know someday things will get better." Right in the middle of dark, kick-ass rock. I love that. What brings that attitude out in you guys?

Per: Yeah, I like that. That's Gospel, you know, "it's getting better and better." When I did that in the studio, we were all very happy. We were all like "Fuck, that's how it's got to be," and it sounds very... almost like a religious feel. We're not religious at all, but we're all fans of music that is touching, you know what I mean? And we wanted to do a touching record, so when we recorded that song, we knew we succeeded. It's about us. We stand for it. We totally believe in that song and this record, and it came out good. That was one of the last songs recorded for the record. That's going to be the next video.

Cosmik: "Wild & Crazy" is absolutely not designed for airplay, but it's one of the greatest songs on Black City. It's also against type, I think. Is there a story behind that song?

Per: That's also Jonah's, and he's secret about these things. He never tells. I think at a certain time he was getting cheated by somebody and it made him very mad.

Cosmik: Yeah, I guess so. That was a lyrical beating. "I am your fuckin' bad behavior." Gotta love that. It seems like every song has some line like that to draw us in.

Per: You can almost understand what it's about, you know. "I'm not your toy for penetration," of course, he's being used and getting pissed and telling everybody "I'm her bad behavior."

Cosmik: I think it's interesting listening to you talk about Jonah's lyrics, because it sounds like you're curious, too, and just as much in the dark as we are, or almost. Like you've thought "what did he mean by this part here" while you play a song.

Per: He's not really talking about this stuff with me. He's very afraid what his lyrics are about. We're kind of afraid for each other, as a matter of fact.

Cosmik: Honestly? Why's that?

Per: I don't know, really. We always do songs together, but when we do songs by ourselves we're always afraid to say what it's about. It's a bit... (laughs) nerdy, but...

Cosmik: Can you explain from your side why you feel that way?

Per: ... I don't know. It's just like something's just embarrassing to talk with him about stuff like that. I can't really explain it. It's just nerdy. It has to do... (laughs) I can't explain it.

Cosmik: Wow! A roadblock. God help me, I just don't know how to get through this one. (Laughs.) Okay, I guess you really... just don't know. That's one I've never heard before. I'm going to bug you about it again when I see you in Seattle, so... It's an interesting situation, though.

Per: Yeah, it is. I just can't explain it.

Cosmik: Well, whatever that is, you make up for it everywhere else, because after all the interviews I've read with all of you I think you've gotta be the most confident band on the planet. I've seen you quoted as saying you're the best band on the planet, not in a playful way, but very matter-of-fact, like you were saying the sky is blue or something. That's a tall order to fill once you say it. Have you ever regretted that statement?

Per: No, not really. But when people ask me stupid questions they'll [get] a stupid answer, and sometimes it just feels good to be cocky. I don't really care if we are the best band in the world or the best band ever. Sometimes it feels good to be an asshole and tease people. I've got good reactions from stuff like that, you know? But no, I never regret it. Why should I? It was not even honest. I was just fucking around with the guy I talked with. I think we're a very good band for nowadays, you know what I mean, but of course there have been bands that I think were way better than us, but it doesn't really matter, because this is now and we're unbeatable. We have to think that we're the best band, otherwise we wouldn't do this. But... I mean, you're a nice guy and we've had a good conversation, but to be honest, if some [interviewer] is throwing shit to us, we respond like that. We're a very cocky band but as I said before, we didn't buy our attitudes. Sometimes it feels good to be an idiot, but that's just how it is, I guess. When you say a thing like that, of course it's just arrogant bullshit, but it doesn't really matter. Any band could do that, but I don't think just any band could come up with and do "Black City," you know?

(C) 2003 - DJ Johnson