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 by Lauren Gitlin
Sweden's dreamy foursome The Perishers (singer/guitarist Ola Kluft, keyboardist Martin Gustafson, bassist Pehr Astrom, and drummer Thomas Hedlund) hail from the teensy Northern town of Umea where the winters are long and the days are short. "People that live in that part of Sweden are much more quiet and - how do I put this? They have a tendency to be more depressed," admits Kluft, who, with his childhood friend Martin, spearheaded the band senior year of high school at the tender age of eighteen.
The group's come a long way since its earliest incarnation, a Guns N'Roses-inspired rock band called Rash that Kluft and Gustafson started when they were ten years old. "I remember Martin wrote about lots about mopeds. He really wanted a moped," says Ola. On the band's sparkling U.S. debut, "Let There Be Morning," spare, sweeping melodies and Ola's plaintive murmur belie more of the sad, far-North legacy than motorbike-induced rock. The opening track, "Weekends," is a whispery Everyman's dirge about heading back to work after two precious weekend days - a sentiment most of us can relate to. Elsewhere, the album mines topics ready-made for melancholic rumination: relationships, break-ups, nostalgia, drugs, and death. The lovelorn piano ballads "A Reminder" and "Trouble Sleeping" are the kinds of twinkling tear-jerkers best heard curled up in your bed on a rainy afternoon.
But despite outer appearances, the Perishers aren't out to make you weep and moan. "If we can help to comfort people or just make them feel better that's fantastic," says Kluft. "I think our music does that. That's what I've heard from a lot of different people." Find out for yourself: The quartet is currently on tour opening up for Sarah McLachlan. And for those hungry for more Perishers, fear not. After their tour wraps up in June, they'll head back to the studio to begin work on album number two, which promises to plumb the same emotional depths of their first album. "Occasionally record company people might tell us to write more up-tempo songs, but we don't really care," says Kluft. "The up-tempo songs are rarely as good as the slow ones so we keep writing slow ones. That's what we do best." |
