‘Manchester: In Residents’ … #23: Pam

'Wesley Snipes is out of jail now so he's probably available, that would make living here just that little bit better...'

What’s your name?

Pam Van-Damned

What do you do?

I do many different things... from performing at clubs with creatures of the night, to photographing bands that pass through the city. My main love and path in life is photography, it really does rule over all the other loves that I have. I have a passion for working with people who I admire in some way (music, movies, fashion) so I try and find a way to photograph them whenever they are here. My most recent photography gigs were with Arthur Brown, Lydia Lunch and Paddy Considine... two at gigs and one at a film screening. One shoot planned, two unplanned. I try to keep up to date with whoever is doing something here and find a way to contact or connect with whoever I want to photograph. I really do get obsessed sometimes, but it's a good thing... I just get excited about fucking EVERYTHING! I'm also part of Tranarchy, a collective of drag queens, artists, performers, chaos makers and switchblade sisters. We put on parties, film screenings and perform around the city... anything from singing Judas Priest songs with a bunch of warriors before a screening of Mad Max II at a drive-in cinema, to putting on the Andrew W.K. after party with Cherie Lily. It's all crazy and wild and fun... we just want people to express themselves, get messy and freak out to disco and heavy metal. I'm curating our next film screening, it's an Action Movie Marathon showing Predator, Escape From New York, Robocop, Cobra, The Terminator and Road House. All nighter, baby! I've watched Robocop on repeat for longer than 12 hours before, so this will be a walk in the park for me...

 Where do you live?

I've recently moved to Salford with two men that I now class as family, my absolute father figures. Salford is perfect, I'm totally sold already. Before here I lived in Rusholme, and before that Withington. I do like that side of Manchester and have a lot of hang out spots that I'll still go to, but I won't miss the bus route. No fucking way. I was reaching Patrick Bateman mental murder levels with the students... and I don't even care that I'm saying this. I hate sitting on buses with students. I'm still getting lost at the moment because I've not lived in Salford long, and I recently found some really weird subway art that ended up in my nightmares... full flesh coloured mermaids with tiny heads. Terrifying. But I know I'm on the right road home when I walk past the church near my house because the massive plastic Jesus outside the door always shocks me back to life and I walk faster to get away from the fucking thing. Put it away! That all sounds quite scary, but really living in Salford has been a dream so far. I love a lot of the old buildings here and have spotted a ton of locations to use in new photoshoots already, I can't wait to explore this place.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I was born in Manchester... my mum and dad owned a scrapyard here for a while and a lot of my family were born here. It's just me, my mum and my brother now, and they live in Rochdale where I was raised from the age of five. Rochdale gets a lot of stick and even though some bad shit did happen to me there, it was also a great place to grow up, if you were adventurous with it. When I first got into photography I didn't have to go far to find abandoned buildings, woods and lakes to shoot in. I still use a lot of the same locations now. You just can't find that everywhere, old warehouses full of hidden passages and smashed bottles. I love that shit! I didn't really know anyone in Rochdale though, and I wanted to be near my friends and get involved with everything that was happening, and also start doing my own stuff too. So when I moved out I decided to get closer to Manchester because it was the natural thing to do, with most of my work and life dotted around the city. I love doing what I do in my hometown, and I'm proud to have been raised here. It's a big thing for me because my family history is scattered in the place that I create, and I can feel it when I experience things here. It's a special place to be. I don't think I could ever live central though, I need to be around big parks and places where I can get high, climb trees and break bones... city living makes me hurl, sorry friends!... (not sorry).

What’s great about this city?

The people. It's the people, hands down. People from Manchester, people from other places, people from nowhere, people from the wild side. I've met all kinds of people here, people that embrace this city and make a difference. From drag queens to art curators, teachers and bakers. I think it's a good sign when you know a lot of different people doing a lot of different things in one place at the same time. It hasn't always been so alive and exciting for me though, I remember having shit all to do but watch movies and imagine having friends that I could create with, party with and live a movie life with. I'm movie obsessed, I'm a dreamer... I always want things to be a vision, I just can't help thinking that way. So sometimes things get sad and tough, but I fight through it all like a warrior... and living here makes things less sad and less tough, because I'm surrounded by such brilliant people... flawless queens, fearless women, fabulous men and every little thing in between. So right now it's the people because it's down to them that exciting things are happening and I can live a half-movie life. I also have my first major solo-exhibition happening and I'm beyond happy that it's taking place here. It contains portraits and live images that I've taken of bands/musicians including Crystal Castles, Lene Lovich, Gossip, The Damned, Patrick Wolf, Debbie Harry, KISS, Amanda Palmer and more, with most of them shot in and around the city.

What’s not so great?

THE PEOPLE! Just kidding... The not-so-great things are the most boring things, and I hate thinking about boring things. No decent jobs, it's a small place, and sometimes you just wanna break out and sit on a beach or get picked up by Kurt Russell in a muscle car. Seriously, where are all the guys with muscle cars? I'm putting a call out right here right now. This is obviously the worst part about living here, because my head is in the clouds and I wanna be picked up in a muscle car. I wanna drive that muscle car through billboards and do tons of stunts. But we can start with a rad guy with a rad car. If you could just pick a few American men up and drop them around my house, that would be great too. Wesley Snipes is out of jail now so he's probably available, that would make living here just that little bit better.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

I definitely don't have one favourite Manchester building. I really love a ton of stuff here, but half the stuff I love I know nothing about. I know that I should research places that I love, but I don't... I just usually say 'I really love that building' and hope that one of my many, well-informed friends gives me a little education. And then I forget and everything becomes 'that building' again. But when I was a teenager I really loved a place called Chamber House. It was behind my high school and was a huge, broken down mansion full of wreckage aside from a marble staircase that lead to nowhere, the steps just ended. And then you were upstairs, and outside because most of the roof was gone. It was the right side of creepy and in the grounds around the mansion we once found big, huge plastic dinosaurs that had their heads chopped off. I don't really know what happened to the remains, but apparently they started to sink into the ground and had to be removed. I heard that it used to be super grand and bad-ass, I would have loved to have seen it when it wasn't a half-burnt out Goosebumps set. I always skived school in there, so Chamber House was never 'that building', it always had a name.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

I think I'm just gonna pick who I fancy the most, and that's Ian McShane. My mum worked with his dad when she was younger, and I only found that out because I told her that I fancied Ian McShane and I wanted him to wink at me because it would make my head explode with sexiness. He is one of the greatest actors out there and I could watch him non-stop, his eyes are mesmerising and he just has a certain way about him that I find incredibly appealing. Plus he was in Hot Rod which is one of the funniest films ever, I watch it all the time. He's a Blackburn Blackbeard and as much as I do love a lot of Mancunians and people born in and around here, he is definitely right up there. He is just so SEXY.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

I don't really go out for drinks like people go out for drinks. Usually because I'm pretty skint and I prefer to go on full nights out rather than blow all my party money on the odd few drinks here and there. I like to save the party. But when I go out at night it's always Bollox, Drunk At Vogue, Off The Hook and I recently went to a new drag night, Cha Cha Boudoir, which is showcasing performers from all over in the form of American style drag tipping. With Tranarchy, we get to jump in and out of a lot of these nights and everyone supports each other throughout this... collectives obviously create craziness, and everyone wants to do different things. But then different collectives are born, new nights start appearing and everyone just jumps in and out of each others parties... it's never-ending fun right now. I'm also a movie obsessive, so I have the monthly pass for Cineworld at Parrs Wood and it's the best thing ever. Me and my friend go on full blown cinema days where we don't come out til night, armed with snacks and pre-made joints. It's like a day out. Get up, get out, get high, get lost. I couldn't live without that cinema pass, it's £14 a month and you can watch as many movies as you like... it's absolutely my favourite thing to do. We also go adventuring in Fletcher Moss (Didsbury) if we have a break in movies, it's the most beautiful place and we do lots of daft stuff and completely let go whenever we are there... usually by playing Jurassic Park.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

We have a serious lack of cinemas. Old Hollywood cinemas, or beat up 1980's cinemas... the cinemas that I read about, and that used to be here. We really don't have enough, and as much as there are way more film screenings happening, which is perfect and wonderful, I still crave a big screen and darkness. I think if Manchester was home to a late night, red-lit cinema then I'd definitely meet my dream date, watch The Lost Boys and drink a lot of beer.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

...be the worst choice, but also the best. I read that people have raised enough money to make a RoboCop statue in Detroit, so I'd use all of my Mayor power to get a RoboCop statue here... but it's my jawline and lips, so to other people it would look kinda weird but not weird enough for people to comment on, yet I know that it's really me under there... and I'm RoboCop. So it's the worst decision in terms of everything else in the world because I'd be a shit Mayor, but I'd also be a RoboCop statue in the middle of town. It's a fair trade, I think. Then I'd just sit in my office and look at the statue and smile to myself until you all got rid of me. Or kept me as Mayor, depending on your taste in movies.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Ian McShane. Give him my details. And my knickers.

Pam's current exhibition, 'City Of The Van Damned', produced by Two Little Birds, can be seen until Tuesday the 7th of May at 2022 NQ, details here. 

Propeller presents 'Twelfth Night' and 'The Taming Of The Shrew' at The Lowry

Another ambitious double-header comes to town from Propeller Theatre Company. In hot pursuit of the twin outing (no pun intended) of 2011's 'Richard III' and 'The Comedy Of Errors', this time around the all-male players present 'Twelfth Night' and 'The Taming Of The Shrew', playing on alternate nights and a matinee at The Lowry. An all-male cast they may be, but that's the only thing remotely 'traditional' about the company. Propeller's approach to the texts is both irreverent and devoted, and their productions offer other such rewarding contradictions; slapstick yet wonderfully choreographed, raucous but impeccably musical (all the cast seem to be accomplished musicians alongside everything else). Whether any common threads or new revelations will be drawn out between two very disparate plays over two consecutive nights' performance remains to be seen, but I'll be attending with a very open mind.

'Twelfth Night' plays on the 9th and 13th of April, 'The Taming Of The Shrew' on the 10th and 13th of April.

Don't forget to check out The Shakespeare Girl next week for my reviews.

Tickets are available here.

‘Manchester: In Residents’ … #22: Israel

‘There’s a sort of ‘against all odds’ vibe to this place, there’s a culture of acceptance but also of independence….’

Photograph by Malc Stone.

What’s your name?

Israel-Winter Delgado

What do you do?

I’ve tried a little bit of everything, shop work, writing for a fashion magazine, partying. But I’ve just started a course that should finally get me into University to study Public Relations.

Where do you live?

I’m living in Altrincham at the moment, it’s a Cheshire postcode but technically it falls within Manchester so it’s the best of both worlds while I’m studying really.

Tell us the story of how you ended up in Manchester.

I’ve lived here my whole life, but I’ve done a lot of moving around. As a teenager I never really felt like I had a home except Manchester. It was never any specific place, just the streets and the buildings and the lights. I never spent more than a week anywhere at a time. I used to just disappear into the city, it drove my parents wild but there was always something I loved about never being tied down to one place. My friends and I would spend a couple of nights in a hotel or a friend’s place or a squat or guys’ houses. There were nights we had no money and we just slept rough or queued up for hostels. Those years were fluid, nothing was constant. People came and went and home was wherever you laid your head, home was just Manchester. I have a tattoo that I got done when I was seventeen, I was drunk and it was spur of the moment when a friend offered to do it, but it was something that I’d been thinking about for a while. It’s lyrics from the City & Colour song ‘Coming Home’, worked into the art from his first record and it says: ‘And hell you know it ain’t worth shit’. The whole song is Dallas Green listing the places he’s been to, but none of it matters because he’s coming home to the person he loves. It’s something deeply personal to me; I’ve never really felt at home in any one place and the tattoo represents that ongoing search for my one true home. It’s a reminder that no matter where I go, or what I’ve done, that Manchester has been a home to me.

What’s great about this city?

It’s been a home when I had none. But it’s not just home in that the streets and bars and hotels were my home. Manchester is such a nurturing city, and there is such history here. Some of the greatest bands, clubs, thinkers, writers, and people in every field have come from this town. I’m proud to be from somewhere that has been pushing the boundaries in so many ways for centuries. There’s an environment of acceptance here, I’ve grown up in a city where completely different groups of people, different cultures and subcultures all exist in their own sort of harmony. There’s a sort of ‘against all odds’ vibe to this place, there’s a culture of acceptance but also of independence. So many times I’ve seen minority groups that anywhere else would be mortal enemies defending each other and standing up for individuality. It’s something I’ve genuinely never seen anywhere else.

What’s not so great?

I think Manchester’s stuck in a rut at the moment; we have this incredible city that’s given so many great things to the world but there’s this massive question of ‘What’s next?’ A lot of the city is being modernised with buildings like Beetham Tower that just don’t really fit with the city. It’s like this directionless modernisation for the sake of modernisation. There haven’t really been many interesting developments in the culture scene, there are a lot of small club nights but there’s nothing big and new. I think the city just needs something new and fresh, it needs to be revitalised. There’s also a lot of history for me here. I’m planning on moving away next year because having lived here my whole life every street has a memory. There’s a lot of dark shit that went down here for me, parts of my life that a lot of people don’t know about, and in a way that’s personal to me there are memories that I need to get away from before I can come back. I love Manchester but maybe I’m just too jaded now, it’s a great city and I think it’s sad that I’m driven to a point where I don’t feel I can live here anymore. I will definitely come back one day, there’s just a lot of shit I need to get away from so that I can move on.

Do you have a favourite Manchester building?

I’d have to say The Royal Exchange. I love the Victorian architecture in the Classical style and the arcade between Cross Street and St Anne’s Square is home to the tobacconist’s which is one if my favourite stores in the city. What really sets The Royal Exchange apart for me and makes it my favourite building is the theatre inside. I’ve seen so many productions there and the theatre in the round space is one of my favourites. I love the Apollo 11-esque theatre module suspended from the main columns in the hall. The contrast between the intricate Victorian architecture and the modern engineered theatre below the hall’s main glass dome is, I think, an incredibly successful one. Pictures don’t do it justice, you have to visit and see a production there, the atmosphere is unique and it’s a space I just love being around.

Do you have a favourite Mancunian?

I don’t think I could say, there are so many great people that have come from this city. Tony Wilson and Emmeline Pankhurst have to be up there, I mean one of them essentially gave the world Joy Division and the other is largely responsible for women’s rights in this country. I will say though it’s a special thing to be a Mancunian and a lot of people who aren’t from here don’t understand that. There isn’t really a sense of national pride in Manchester; it’s the city not the country that gives us our heritage and our unyielding sense of pride.

What’s your favourite pub/bar/club/restaurant/park/venue?

I always loved Bar Below on Canal Street. I was never really into the whole scene there, but Bar Below was something special. I don’t know what it is now, it’s changed names and hands a few times since I last went a couple of years ago, it’s a shame. It’s a tiny basement space but it was so well decorated and run, it was intimate and elegant with a couple of sofas, a short bar and some of the friendliest bar staff. I had some great times there, just having a drink and meeting people without the queeny pop music vibe in the rest of the village, there was this dope guy on the bar who always played Blondie records and I remember this Debbie Harry shirt he wore a bunch of times. I miss that place.

What do you think is missing from Manchester?

Like I said earlier, we need something new and fresh. Manchester’s still a pioneering city but it’s been that way for so long it’s kind of passé. We have a lot of shit happening that doesn’t happen in other cities, and some really great individual scenes but Manchester has always been that way so it’s nothing new. It needs something even bigger and even more ground-breaking, especially with the destruction of places like Legends on Whitworth Street. There are a lot of people who I’m sure would lynch me for saying this but Legends had become stale, but it is sad to see it go. It’s an historic part of the city and it’s disappearing to make way for a hotel, it’s like the Hacienda story all over again. Inch by inch the concrete evidence of this great city is being eroded for what, hotels and apartment blocks? It’s time we created new cultural landmarks and gave Manchester some new history, and you don’t have to be a born and bred Mancunian to do that.

If I was Mayor for a day I would …

Pass an act to ban Ian Simpson from getting any more development contracts in Manchester. Parkway Gate student accommodation isn’t bad, but Beetham Tower is horrible and the plans for Sharp Street, First Street and a lot of other areas in the city are very similar. Planning permission is approved for a lot of his designs already and soon Manchester will just be full of tall, emotionless, cantilevered glass shit. I would definitely stop him or whoever is approving these plans, Manchester is a city with soul and it doesn’t need soulless modernisation for the sake of it.

Who else would you like to nominate to answer this questionnaire?

Ian Simpson, I’d like to find out why he seems to hate Manchester so much! Vendetta aside I think it’d be interesting to see university students’ answers to these questions. All my answers have come from a place of living here my whole life, I never really chose to be here and the city has informed the person I am today. I’d like to get a whole new perspective from someone to whom the city is fresh and new, see what it is that draws them to current day Manchester from the outside.

Objects of desire: Part 3

Time for some more objects of desire. The sales weren’t up to much, and let’s face it your savings could be better, but even imaginary retail therapy can help on the long haul to payday . Here’s what future-me has his eye on ...

Ghetto Blaster Cushion

£17

Beard T-shirt

£22

BaByliss i-Stubble Trimmer

£40

New Balance trainers

£55

Primavera Festival, Barcelona

£145

Flight from Manchester to Melbourne

£685

Smithson Martin Emulator Multi-Touch Professional DJ System

£2000

My 50 Favourite Songs of 2012

Well, the world didn’t end, but it’s still in a right old state, and isn’t music the very best of comforts and the most comforting of distractions? I’ve had a special little moment with every one of these songs in 2012. I’ll wax lyrical on the top ten when we get there, and what a ten it is. Here’s the Spotify playlist, and here's the rundown from 50…

50. Ellie Goulding – Anything Could Happen

49. Amadou & Mariam – Chérie

48. Susanne Sundfør – White Foxes

47. Andrew Bird – Desperation Breeds…

46. Hannah Cohen – Boy + Angel

45. Tame Impala – Feels Like We Only Go Backwards

44. Miike Snow – Paddling Out

43. alt-J – Breezeblocks

42. Jesca Hoop – DNR

41. The Walkmen – The Witch

40. Simian Mobile Disco – Seraphim

39. Laura Gibson – Milk-Heavy, Pollen-Eyed

38. Bowerbirds – Tuck the Darkness In

37. Sigur Ros – Varúð

36. Django Django – Hail Bop

35. Cat Power – Ruin

34. Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe

33. Sky Ferreira – Everything Is Embarrassing

32. Azealia Banks – Luxury

31. Lana Del Rey – This Is What Makes Us Girls

30. Blur – Under the Westway

29. The Irrepressibles – Arrow

28. Nite Jewel – One Second of Love

27. The Heartbreaks – Winter Gardens

26. THEESatisfaction – QueenS

  

25. Caotico – Gold

24. Everything Everything – Cough Cough

23. Josephine Foster – Blood Rushing

22. Twin Shadow – Five Seconds

21. Krystal Klear – From The Start

20. Alex Winston – Medicine

19. Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan

18. Perfume Genius – Floating Spit

17. Phantogram – Don't Move

16. John Talabot – Missing You

15. Bright Moments – Drifters

14. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis – Thrift Shop - feat. Wanz

13. Friends – A Thing Like This

12. The Child of Lov – Heal

11. Orbital – One Big Moment

And the top 10…

10. Kitty Pryde – Okay Cupid

‘Get out my rooooom….!’ A super late entry from Ms Pryde and her girlish, lolloping gem of a single. It didn’t occur to me until about my tenth listen that this was rap. I’ve been so brainwashed into thinking rap belongs entirely to hip-hop but here’s Kitty to prove otherwise. Lyrically, this might be favourite thing on the list. Just listen:

‘Lordy, shorty, you're a 10 and I wait for your drunk dials at 3:30 am, I love them.

So call me sober when you're ready, not goin’ steady, but babe I planned our wedding already’

9. Todd Terje – Inspector Norse

Everybody loves this track, how could they not? It’s Bentley Rhythm Ace and The Clangers for a generation reared on Aeroplane mixes. Terje’s amazing instrumental shows there are other ways to be uplifting without having crashing great crescendos everywhere. And just when you think you’re in the groove with it, at three minutes thirty that weird hummmmmm bottoms out and makes you want to do all the messy things in the world. Out and out magic.

8. Grimes – Genesis

She’s the Enya you can dance to. That’s a good thing, by the way. I nearly chose ‘Oblivion’ or ‘Be A Body’, the album is choc-full of these little masterpieces, but ‘Genesis’ neatly represents everything she’s best at. The Enya’s really kick in just shy of a minute but then it gives way to that amazing beat... An electronic masterclass.

7. Mykki Blanco & Brenmar – Wavvy

The queering of hip-hop continues apace. Mykki Blanco is not just an artist who happens to be gay either, there is full-on sexual potency and radical drag at the heart of his material. This addictive track is actually trad hip-hop in lots of ways, the me-me-me vibes are intact and the production could be a 50 Cent record, but just listen to those words:

‘I pimp slap you bitch niggas with my limp wrist, bro

What the fuck I gotta prove to a room full of dudes

Who ain't listening to my words cuz they staring at my shoes…’

Come out Missy Elliott, it’s lovely out here.

6. Girls Aloud – On The Metro

Comeback single ‘Something New’ was just clearing the decks for this knowing, rollicking bullet of a track. Great pop can usually eclipse whoever is actually singing it, and this would have been just as good in the hands of anyone from Mini Viva to Kylie, but the fact Cheryl at the very least might have actually cried on the Metro adds some charming veracity to the whole affair.

5. Sleigh Bells – Comeback Kid

I didn’t really know or mind what Sleigh Bells were going to do next, but this piece of massive Ratatat-meets-Stars buzz-saw gutter pop turned into my favourite ever track of theirs. Drunk air-guitaring to this became a brilliant thing for me this year, it’s in my repertoire forever.

4. iamamiwhoami – Goods

Kate Bush’s influence seems to be all over the place this year (Alex Winston, Grimes) and nowhere is it more obvious than on the weird helium-and-trill vocals of this track, so it might take you a while to realise you are in the middle of the best dance song of 2012. Jonna Lee’s iamamiwhoami project has delivered something astonishingly good in the Kin album. Not a shabby moment on it.

3. Haim – Forever

Perfect guitar pop record. I’ve been falling in love to and with this song since the summer. It might turn out to be one of those golden one-hit moments a la Wilson Philips but right now it sounds like the greatest reason in the world to grow your hair and cycle round town with your sisters. The Lindstrom and Prins Thomas re-work was one of my favourite mixes of the year too.

2. Solange – Losing You

Her most sensational output since ‘Sandcastle Disco’, nobody has quite put their finger on why this track is so great, so perfect in fact. Every botched description I’ve read in the press has put it further out of reach. It’s a sad song first off, all my favourite songs are, but it sounds like she’s at a block party, and the weird dissonance between the two is a pop trick worthy of Prince. It’s quite simply brilliant. You can stop mentioning the B-word now.

1. Winhill/Losehill – Tell Her She's The Light Of The World

Winhill/Losehill - Tell Her She's the Light of the World from Winhill/Losehill on Vimeo.

It’s fate and only fate that a band that just rolled up in my ‘recommended listening’ one day has had such a lasting impact on me. This video was the first thing I heard from Sweden’s Winhill/Losehill and it was love at first listen. ‘Tell Her She's The Light Of The World’ isn’t just my song of the year, their album Swing Of Sorrow is the most perfectly realised and moving set of songs I have heard in ages. From the opening ten seconds of silence, to ‘Karin’s Hymn’ where a mournful cello drops out of the sky like a Lancaster Bomber, to the perfect happy/sad Neil Young-esque ‘The House Is Black’ and ‘Long Way To Next Stop’, to the brilliantly funny Beirut-style stomper ‘I Leave You ‘Cause I Don’t Care’, this sounds like a band at the absolute peak of their vision, and it’s only a debut. Song, band, and album of 2012.

 Postscript and Interview

I was so possessed by wanting to know where this kind of songwriting can come from, and getting tired of reading badly Google-translated interviews in Swedish, that I tracked down the band myself and asked them some questions. Here’s what they told me:

The music for this album was written under a terrible cloud of sadness around Jonas’ mother’s illness and subsequent passing. Is it important for listeners to know about these unusually fraught circumstances, or are you happy for the album to stand alone?

JONAS - I hope it can stand alone without the listeners necessarily knowing about all that. I mean, those things are the reasons we came together to make the record so of course it’s really important for us, but my impression is that anyone who has been through something similar, like the loss of a loved one or any form of painful breakup, can catch up on that just from relating to the songs in themselves.

The band name comes from a place near to me, just over in Derbyshire, where Jonas visited as a youth. What are your memories of England, and have you or any of the band ever been to Manchester?

JONAS – One of my memories is walking in the mountains just outside of Hope village; the landscapes were very inspiring and beautiful. The strongest memory though is the music I experienced and learned during my stay at a folk music camp. English folk music has definitely been an inspiration for Swing of Sorrow. Unfortunately though, I've never been to Manchester.

CARL – Many members of the band have been to the UK and we’d obviously love to come play there soon, especially in a music city like Manchester!

Where does the album title Swing Of Sorrow come from?

CARL - The short answer is that ‘back in your wild swing of sorrow love’ is the first line in ‘Don’t let the inside shine out’. But Swing of Sorrow was also the working title for another song way back, which we eventually changed. When we were to decide on an album title it suddenly came back to us. Partly because we felt that all the mood swings we’d been through during the grieving process was exactly that, a swing of sorrow. And partly because of the musical reference, a way of tying grief and music together.

What makes this record so special for me is that there are moments of terrible melancholy offset by a wonderful sense of elation and hope. Is that a fair assessment of your intentions?

JONAS - I find it hard to define intentions like that, composing is just so much more intuitive to me, but it’s definitely a really beautiful and flattering assessment of how one can receive our music.

Some artists revel in abstraction, such as Bon Iver, and that can work really well. Your writing seems to be the opposite, there’s a concern that the listener understands exactly what you intend. For instance the line, ‘In these songs I have tried to make it clear: whenever she is close there is no fear’, is one of my favourite moments. I find that frankness and lack of irony really moving. Is that an accurate description for what your music is trying to achieve?

CARL - I believe that sometimes a straight line like that can be the best way to say something complicated, and sometimes a queer abstraction is necessary to say the simplest thing. We’re really into writing songs and telling stories that matter to ourselves in ways that move the listener and I wouldn’t want to avoid any methods of writing to achieve that. We write for ourselves and for strangers, so to speak.

In the rest of Europe and America, Swedish music seems to fall in and out of fashion from time to time (see also Canadian music). Would you consider yourself part of a ‘scene’, and do you think it’s a help or a hindrance?

JONAS - I wouldn’t really say we’re part of a scene in that way. Of course there are some bands that we feel related to musically, but that’s sort of independent of time and space, and some bands that are our friends, but that’s mostly being from Umeå and having known each other from way back.

‘Karin’s Hymn’ is one of the loveliest instrumental pieces I’ve heard in years. Are you classically trained musicians, and do you differentiate between using one type of instrument and another when you’re making music for the band?

JONAS - Thank you so much. Writing that piece was a truly proud moment for me as a composer and one of the songs I remember playing on the piano for my mother while she was sick. Writing music to record and playing music live are two very different things to me and I try to think as little as possible of the practical circumstances and different levels of training of the musicians when I'm writing, so that the creative process can be as free as possible.

CARL – As far as the band is concerned, everybody comes from really different backgrounds with various degrees of having studied or worked with music, but we’ve all been playing together in different constellations since about high school.

What’s great about living in Sweden, and wuld you ever consider living anywhere else?

CARL - What’s great is the few remains of the welfare state, but that’s unfortunately being dismantled more and more for every day. If things don’t change for the better soon, maybe we’ll have to consider going into exile: preferably somewhere a bit warmer, less racist and more fair. Where is that again?

JONAS - The musical climate in Sweden is often very warm and supportive and it has helped me and the band a lot in the creation of Swing of Sorrow to have the kind of support we've had from other musicians, teachers, institutions and people around us.

I can hear so many diverse influences in the music (some that may not even be there), such as Neil Young, Beirut, P:ano… Who really does influence you as musicians and songwriters?

JONAS – Me and my co-producer Henrik Nybom (also the band's drummer) were listening a lot to classical composers while arranging and recording Swing of Sorrow, for example Igor Stravinsky and György Ligeti. Rufus Wainwright and Frank Zappa are two other important influences.

CARL – From those you mentioned, I’ve taken more interest in Neil Young again just recently, when it comes to writing lyrics. But during the work with Swing of Sorrow, and in general, I really find the most inspiration in writers and poets rather than songwriters. Lyn Hejinian, Forough Farrokhzad and Marguerite Duras for example.

JONAS - And in the end, just hanging around together is probably the most inspiring for all of us!

What new music have you enjoyed this year?

JONAS - Just the other day I discovered Sufjan Stevens latest Christmas-album which gave me a joyful feeling that'll hopefully stick during the holidays. My greatest musical experience this year was definitely Bon Iver's perfomance at Way Out West in Gothenburg last summer, which was one of the greatest experiences of my life, all categories.

CARL - It’s been a such a good year for new music I think, it’s really hard to choose. But Cat Power was really great, as well as Patti Smith and Rufus Wainwright. And I’d say some of the songs on Psychedelic Pill are among the best Neil Young’s ever written.

What’s next for the band, and when can we see you play?

JONAS - Well, we’re back to writing new material of course, and we’re really looking forward to play at By:Larm in Oslo in February, our first gig outside of Sweden!