AEM019 We Are Soldiers We Have Guns

“I’m gonna walk / down the side­walk / like it’s a run­way / … / I’m gonna be like Madonna“
We Are Sol­diers We Have Guns,  Novem­ber

I’ve just moved to New York City, and it’s just turned to Novem­ber, and I have to say that I admire the atti­tude of those lyrics.  When it starts get­ting darker ear­lier, and everyone’s bun­dled up in pat­terned scarves and heavy coats, the side­walk starts to feel a bit lonely-I’d very much love to be like Madonna walk­ing home from work some days.

We Are Sol­diers We Have Guns may exist for just such times.  The Gothen­burg (Swe­den, for all those not down with maps) based pop vehi­cle brings a sharp attack of straight-forward, hon­est lyri­cism with some sur­pris­ingly upbeat arrange­ments. This lush­ness is the prod­uct of the mind of Gothenburg’s Malin Dahlberg, for­merly of Dou­glas Heart and Lau­rel Music, joined by a wide cir­cle of instrument-wielding accomplices.

One could argue that the major musi­cal accom­plish­ment of the 1980s was to re-inject pop­u­lar music with a sense of fun and excite­ment.  Pop redis­cov­ered that sense of child-like won­der that rock and roll had so fool­ishly squan­dered while try­ing to sound cool.  Col­or­ful cloth­ing, silly faces, etc.  Try to imag­ine the 80s with­out pic­tur­ing a bunch of teenagers danc­ing around a library.  See? You can’t.

The most recent decade of pop, on the other hand, has excelled at incor­po­rat­ing the sonic mas­tery and pre­ci­sion of exper­i­men­tal and pro­gres­sive music into the pop frame­work.  Albums sound great now.  Mod­ern lumi­nar­ies like Ani­mal Col­lec­tive and Radio­head con­tinue to score points by breed­ing sonic explo­ration with the pop we all know and love.

You’ll find We Are Sol­diers We Have Guns at the inter­sec­tion of these two decades—the unde­ni­able fun and sounds of the 80s per­me­ate the music, espe­cially the “November”/“Our Lips Are Sealed” 7-inch below.  Beneath that, how­ever, is the care­ful sonic craft of this most recent decade of pop.  There’s real atten­tion paid to tone—Dahlberg’s voice in par­tic­u­lar stands out as being spot on tonally nearly all of the time.  Grand, multi-layered voic­ings back up the strong bridges and cho­ruses, while un-layered vocals fill out the softer moments.  Like M83 before them, WASWHG have learned how to pull from the 80s with­out sound­ing wistful—to use their influ­ences as a boost, not a crutch.

On their early work, there’s a pro­gres­sive sparse­ness that dri­ves the power of each track.  Much of the best work on two self-titled E.P.s and the mini album, To Meet is Mur­der is pow­ered by the inter­play between a lonely gui­tar and Dahlberg’s evoca­tive vocals.  “There’s no need for diplo­macy in music,” says Dahlberg, “For every instru­ment I/we use I ask myself: Would the song be good with­out this? If the answer is yes, I never use it.”

That atti­tude is quite appar­ent.  With their newest release, Get Up, Get Out, and on the lovely 7-inch we have on dis­play here, WASWHG really flex their well honed 80s mus­cle while retain­ing the sim­ple power of their early work.  Gone are the sparse guitar-centered arrange­ments, replaced instead with fuller-yet-no-less-intense pop layouts.

Take the A-side “Novem­ber” for exam­ple.  This is an emo­tion­ally sneaky track; the open­ing strokes lead the lis­tener down the path of a groovy polyrhyth­mic synth piece.  When the vocals and gui­tar inter­rupt, the mood changes sub­tly to a more poignant pitch, only to be joined back by the key­board and drums in the lead up to and joy­ful cho­rus.  “I’m gonna be like Madonna,” Dahlberg sings.  Madonna had this much fun, but rarely was she as emo­tion­ally on-cue as Dahlberg is here, squeak­ing her way through the tip-toeing verses and soar­ing over the joy­ous chorus.

The B-side “Our Lips Are Sealed” is a cover of the 1981 Go-Go’s track, and really, this is a clever, clever re-imagination.  WASWHG have adorned the track with trap­pings of the soon-to-be-80s that bands like the Go-Go’s helped cre­ate.  Where there were only the plod­ding 70s-style rhythm keep­ing, WASWHG have added some reverby drum machine hits wor­thy of any Casio-loving 80s band.  A few well-placed synth lines later, and you for­get that the orig­i­nal didn’t sound quite like this.  The mod­ern touches are there as well—the beau­ti­fully lay­ered vocals and height­ened melody of the cho­rus gives WASWHG’s ver­sion a con­tem­po­rary ten­der­ness not entirely present in the orig­i­nal.  So, to recap:  clev­erly plays with the music’s his­tory; cap­tures its orig­i­nal essence; adds a mod­ern touch.  Yep, this is a great cover.

WASWHG wrote once on their web­site, “We Are Sol­diers We Have Guns will never be cool; never be cute.” While I dis­agree slightly (See this.  You can’t tell me that’s not cute), the notion is spot on:  this is music that does not pre­tend to be any­thing other than direct expres­sion from artist to audi­ence.  “I don’t change my words just because they’re put into lyrics,” says Dahlberg.  “I use them as sim­ply as pos­si­ble, just as I do when I speak.” There’s no indie-pretension or shame­less image shap­ing, just sounds that move beyond their source to live wholly in the song.  And that makes this noth­ing short of urgent, beau­ti­ful pop music wor­thy of your attention.

Rick Andrews

Get their LP and EPs here
Three Music Videos:
The Line is a Dot to You
The Great Depres­sion
Me vs. Time=Fixed Game

Read the Ampeater exclu­sive inter­view after the jump!

Side A — November Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Side B — Our Lips Are Sealed Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

[[[Down­load the 7-inch]]]

Inter­view:

Ampeater Review: I sus­pect that peo­ple are sur­prised when they dis­cover, We Are Sol­diers We Have Guns isn’t a hard­core punk band.  So, why the “aggres­sive” name and how do you think it inter­acts with the sound and tone of your music?

Malin Dahlberg, We Are Sol­diers We Have Guns: Some are def­i­nitely sur­prised, yeah. To me that name sort of shows how you can make hard music with­out the usual clichés. You know: lots of gui­tars, lots of scream­ing and lots of jump­ing up and down. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with that, it’s just not what I want to do. I wanted a name that sounds empow­er­ing, uncom­pro­mis­ing and, well, pretty hard­core. To me those are pretty impor­tant sides of my music that I think a lot of peo­ple miss out on because of the tra­di­tion­ally un-aggressive expression.

AR: Which aspects of your sound then have you tried to make uncom­pro­mis­ing?  Lyrics and sim­plic­ity of tone jump to my mind first, but I’m curi­ous to hear your take.

MD: For instance, take “The Line is a Dot to You” (it’s on my Myspace for those who want to hear it). The song is about this hor­ri­ble guy that I met once, and instead of singing, “I’m a bit angry with you,” I sing, “We will aim and shoot you down.” In real­ity I didn’t even approach him, but in the song I can kill him off if I want to! There’s no need for diplo­macy in music, so I’m doing my best to keep it out of mine. It could be by sim­plic­ity or lyrics — I just try to keep an uncom­pro­mis­ing atti­tude towards every­thing that has some­thing to do with my music.

AR: I noticed that all three of your music videos involve, in some way, you look­ing directly at the cam­era for long peri­ods of time.  Whether that’s all a lovely coin­ci­dence or not, it does seem that your songs are con­cerned with being really direct with the lis­tener?  Would you agree?

MD: I actu­ally haven’t thought about the fact that I do so in the videos, I don’t know why that is. But def­i­nitely agree on the sol­diers being direct. I don’t change my words just because they’re put into lyrics. I use them as sim­ply as pos­si­ble, just as I do when I speak. And for every instru­ment I/we use I ask myself: Would the song be good with­out this? If the answer is yes, I never use it.

AR: You can def­i­nitely hear the influ­ence of 80s pop, espe­cially in the new full length.  What do you like about pop music from that decade and what 80s pop ele­ments have found their way into your recordings?

MD: I don’t set out to sound like an eight­ies band or any­thing, but on the other hand it would be weird if my music wasn’t at least a lit­tle bit affected by the eight­ies. I grew up dur­ing the eight­ies, and now I’ve got­ten old enough to appre­ci­ate it again. I lis­ten quite lot to disco from the late sev­en­ties — early eight­ies and I love post punk bands such as Delta 5, The Au-Pairs and (obvi­ously) The Go-Go’s.  I really like the tack­i­ness, the lim­it­less use of effects and funny synth sounds.

AR: Can you talk a bit about the songs you’re track­ing right now?  In what ways do the songs feel sim­i­lar or dif­fer­ent from Get Up, Get Out?  I’m also curi­ous what it’s like record­ing in Brook­lyn vs. Gothenburg.

MD: The new bunch of songs go under the work­ing title Pay­day. To me the biggest dif­fer­ence between record­ing in Brook­lyn and Gothen­burg is that I don’t have a job over here and can finally get the peace one needs to do some­thing cre­ative. That’s also what a lot of the songs are about: The way every­body works their life away with­out ever get­ting prop­erly paid back.

I don’t really know what the songs sound like com­pared to Get Up, Get Out, but telling you about the set­ting might give you an idea: Get Up, Get Out, was recorded in a stu­dio with about 15 peo­ple con­tribut­ing. I record the new songs alone on my lap­top, using only an old Casiosynth that I bought in a Swedish thrift store and the stuff that I find on the streets. So no gui­tars on these tracks, but a lot more drum­ming on boxes and fur­ni­ture from the streets of Brooklyn!

AR: Final ques­tion, very impor­tant: 1980s vs. 2000s.  Which decade’s music wins in a bar fight?

MD: Let me put it this way: The 80s would def­i­nitely win the fight, but 2000s is most likely to go home with the best look­ing guy/girl in the place. While the 2000s is whim­s­ing around with its post-this and ironic takes on that, the 80s would just give her a nice head butt and call it a day. But while the 80s is drink­ing her eleventh beer by the bar, the 2000s is already at someone’s place talk­ing about deep stuff while get­ting undressed.