An Everywhere Indie Band
Get Stockholm Syndrome With Peter Bjorn and John
These are strange times for Peter Bjorn and John. Just one year ago, Peter Morén, Bjorn Yttling and John Eriksson, the three Swedish musicians who comprise the conveniently named rock band, had released two albums no one had heard and had played only a handful of shows in their homeland.
Today, things are different. On Monday, Peter Bjorn and John played their first-ever show in America to a sold out crowd at the Mercury Lounge, which they followed with another sold out show at the Bowery on Tuesday. How did a band on a tiny European label with negligible American distribution sell out two large shows to cynical New Yorkers on their first go?
“I don’t know,” says Peter, “you tell me.”
To this writer’s mind, the success is attributable to a combination of sexual promiscuity and the Internet. The band’s horrifically catchy hit single “Young Folks” most certainly concerns young promiscuous sex, and, as young promiscuous sex tends to do, it has spread at an amazing rate over the Internet as a free download. As a result, Peter Bjorn and John’s third album, Writer’s Block, which will finally be released in America on Tuesday, has earned spastic reviews from most online music blogs, and you can hear music nerds everywhere humming along to the whistle-solo from “Young Folks.”
“The previous two albums [2002’s Peter Bjorn and John and 2005’s Falling Out] were not even available most places, so it is not so strange that people didn’t know us,” Peter said from his home in Stockholm. “To suddenly have a proper hit was a really big change, especially when you’re not a band that deliberately tried to write hits.”
The change was pronounced. In their eight years together prior to the success of “Young Folks,” Peter Bjorn and John had played relatively few shows and, with the exception of short trips to London and Norway, had not left their native Sweden.
“It is very hard to be a musician in Sweden,” Peter warns. “It is a very small concert scene… even now our album sells poorly here. People will recognize the song but will not know the band.”
This is not the case in the rest of Europe. The online presence of “Young Folks” propelled the band on their first-ever European tour this summer, and the band played sold out shows even in countries where Writer’s Block had not been released yet. “We’ve been in Germany and Paris the other week and that was just amazing. We didn’t expect that because everybody before hand said the album wasn’t doing well but the response was great,” Peter said, “Ireland is probably the best, however. For some reason Irish people like us a lot.”
The momentum, it seems, continues to build. After their shows in New York and LA, Peter Bjorn and John will travel to Australia and Japan, where “Young Folks” recently topped the J-Wave pop charts.
But things were not always world tours and Japanese fandom for Peter Bjorn and John.
“We are all from villages in the country side,” Peter explains of his upbringing in the wilds of northern Sweden, “It’s quite far between cities and it’s a lot of nature, so when you were a kid you basically had nothing to do.”
Peter met Bjorn at age 16, when they were united because they “were the only kids in high school who liked Manchester shoe gaze rock” The two have been making music together ever since, and with the addition of percussionist John Eriksson in 1999, the band was naturally complete.
Now, after eight years together, Peter Bjorn and John has transcended the geographic trap that holds back so many bands in only a matter of months.
“I think the thing that’s happening right now is sort of what we have always wanted,” Peter reflected, “to be not a big band but to get audiences big enough to release albums in a lot of territories.”
With the release of Writer’s Block in America on Tuesday, Peter Bjorn and John may join the increasing list of bands who have circumvented the traditional route to music industry success; a band that only a few months ago was without label support, major touring, or even a strong fan base at home, Peter Bjorn and John may be on the verge of achieving their foremost goal: “From the beginning we didn’t think of ourselves as just some Swedish indie band,” Peter said, “but as an indie band everywhere.”