Mando Diao 'Hurricane Bar' album

They’ve been called ”the best band in the world”. They’ve been called ”the most good looking band in the world”.

They’ve been called ”the coolest band in the world”. And it’s not just themselves who says it.

They’re Mando Diao from Sweden, and they’re back. With ”Hurricane Bar” – the magnificent follow-up to the intoxicatedely high-spirited pop explosion “Bring ‘Em In” from 2002. 14 new songs, performed with maximum intensity by Gustaf Norén (vocals/guitar), Björn Dixgård (vocals/guitar), Carl-Johan Fogelklou (bass) and Samuel Giers (drums). And with at least two clear lines going through the whole album: their native town Borlänge – and pop.

Gustaf: ”Hurricane Bar was a rock club that the whole music scene in Borlänge was centred around in the mid 90’s when britpop ruled. A lot of tough guys there. Criminal types…they liked britpop”.

Björn: ”Everybody was there, everybody wanted in…us too, even though we were too young, really. But they threw us in as support act now and then. That’s when we found out what it’s all about.

Since ”Bring ’Em In” put Mando Diao high on the list ”Swedish bands with international potential”, the band has been preaching the Mando gospel on a global crusade, where their eccentric combination of manic energy and persistent melodies has helped building a growing cult of faithful disciples in Europe, USA and especially Japan. With one foot in the 60’s efficient pop songwriting tradition and the other just as comfortably placed in the sounds of today, Mando Diao is ready to surf in on the second wave.

Gustaf: ”It would have been so geeky if we’d tried to do ”Bring ’ Em In” one more time. We’re richer, older and more professional. Mando Diao will always make honest music, reflecting where we are right now”.

Instead, the band went to Bath, England, to record ”Hurricane Bar” with producer Richard Rainey, mostly known for his work with U2. Rainey got in touch with the band after hearing a demo, getting intrigued by the originality of songs like ”Ringing Bells” and ”Added Family”. After a Mando gig in Berlin they got the chance to meet and discuss some life’s more important issues: Beatles, britpop, and the TV series ”The Office”.

Gustaf: ”It didn’t hurt that he was British. The coolest band’s has always been British. Just compare Sex Pistols, Clash and Buzzcocks with the American bands…Guns ’n Roses, Motley Crue and crap like that. And even though Ramones was good, I’ve always liked The Pistols more”.

The band came to England, armed with close to 60 new demoed songs, all of them penned by the increasingly hot songwriting team of Dixgård/Norén.

Gustaf: ”As soon as we’ve had a weekend or a couple of days off between tours, we’ve recorded three or four new songs. Partly because we don’t have a life outside Mando, partly because we have to get all our ideas out”.

Björn: ”We just keep on writing all the time. You never know how long this ability will last. I think it’s limited by time. You’ve got to reflect the period and age you’re living in. And with rock, I’d say it’s…up to 30. At the most. Then it’ll be something completely different”.

It was soon clear that ”Hurricane Bar” would take a different musical path than its predecessor. The soul/rock influences are toned down in favour of a crisp pop sensibility running through tracks as diverse as the guitar tugging “Down In The Past” and “God Knows”, raspberry flavoured bubblegum like ”This Dream Is Over” and ”You Can’t Steal My Love” or the mellow melancholy of ”All My Senses”.

Gustaf: ”We wanted to make a pop record, because it was a long time since anybody did a great pure pop record. Basically we wanted to do a ”Pet Sounds” with straight and simple melodies, since nobody else dares to do it”.

Björn: ”Plus that we wanted absolute top notch level on the song material, and when we picked the songs it was always the pop stuff that won. Because that’s what we do best. We had a lot of rock and soul numbers on demo, but they couldn’t really match the pop songs this time”.

Gustaf: ”It seems this last rock wave has been a lot about proving who’s the coolest. We don’t need that. We’ve already proved we’re cool. Pop is where we come from. It’s our roots. Everything we listen to is pop. Even if it’s been reggae, soul or rock, it’s always been the poppiest songs we liked”.

One of Richard Rainey’s biggest inputs on ”Hurricane Bar” is that it’s more coherent tempo wise, at least compared with the wild debut.

Samuel: ”We recorded almost all of ”Bring ’Em In” in the basement at home in Borlänge. Nobody knew how to do it. We just modelled the sound after the 60’s mod bands, and made the drums way too loud. It made for a cool and rough sound. Our Swedish record company thought that it was good enough for release…there was an incredible energy that just couldn’t be recreated in the studio”.

Carl-Johan: ”Richard Rainey comes from the house- and dance music scene, so he’s obviously very aware of BPM, which we’ve never thought about before. But that’s great. He helped us find the ultimate tempo for each song”.

Gustaf: ”These dance music guys…they really know what difference one BPM more or less can do. And Richard’s got a terrific feeling for finding the right groove. That’s why “Hurricane Bar” will last longer. A song like ”Cut The Rope”…two years ago it would have been fast as hell”.

Björn: ”But it’s not more “produced”…just more Mando. We had strings and horns on ”Bring ’Em In”. ”Hurricane Bar” is just us, playing our four instruments live, basically. There’s hardly any organ. And it’s never more than two guitars on any track”.

In two years, Mando Diao has managed to collect an impressive file of exuberant international press clips. The only thing that maybe gnaws a bit is the recurrent references to the group as a part of a 60’s inspired wave of retro bands. Which might be true if one thinks that pop music is a dated phenomenon. Mando has a somewhat wider view on this.

Gustaf: ”We heard Beatles through our parents, but it was Britpop that made us realise that Beatles really was the biggest thing ever. Having said that, I find it hard listening too much to the old stuff. Modern music has always meant more. Verve, Oasis, Supergrass, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays. You don’t get anywhere by just listening to the “Nuggets” box. And besides, since a couple of years I don’t listen to any music except our own.

Björn: ”The only thing I’ve tried to take from the 60’s is from singers like Steve Marriott and Eric Burdon. They were incredible singers”.

Samuel: ”And then we have the Motown stuff, of course. Four Tops…”Bernadette”.

Gustaf: It’s pop music that just cuts through all trends. Get up and do that number, and you’re king. It’s the same thing with The Beatles’ ”She Loves You”, Oasis’ ”Some Might Say” and The Stone Roses ”I Wanna Be Adored”. It’s pop music that stands so much taller than anything else. So incredibly good. But pop is also about being here now. And that’s why Mando can say that we’re better than The Beatles. It was such a riot when we said that ”Bring ’ Em In” was better than any record by The Beatles, Stones, Kinks or Who. It’s the same thing with “Hurricane Bar”. Because it’s more complete. And it’s of today. We’re here now. The others are dinosaurs.

The first single, ”Clean Town”, has been lying around and matured for about two years. Which, according to Mando's philosophy, is a proof of strength. “If you still like a song then, you know that it’s got mileage”.

”Clean Town” also summarises the Borlänge theme that more or less clearly runs through ”Hurricane Bar”. Which might have something to do with the fact that the band nowadays is based in Stockholm. “It’s a tribute to Borlänge. It’s absolutely not about putting it down…”fucking shit town, let’s get out of here”…it’s more about the fact that you can leave the town, but it will always stay inside you”.

The heartbreaking closer ”Next To Be Lowered” goes even further back than “Clean Town”. It was written in 1997, when a paralysed Gustaf Norén discovered what it meant to stand on the stage of the actual ”Hurricane Bar” and perform a gentle pop tune for an audience that he perceived as sceptical and threatening: “I’ve never been so nervous in my life as when we were about to play that song. I couldn’t do it, eventually. Because the last thing you wanted was to look like a jerk. That’s why we played everything with so much energy that people was in chock over the sheer force. So despite us actually just playing sunshine pop, we still managed to blow one metal band after the other off stage. It was all energy. You didn’t dare to appear vulnerable and play anything that was too subtle. Now we can do it. But not then”.

”Hurricane Bar” is Mando Diao with their guard down. 14 pop songs of the kind that sounds so deceivingly obvious that you’re tempted to call them simple. But as everyone knows, there’s nothing simple about a good pop tune. On the contrary, it couldn’t be more difficult.

ROUND UP IN THE HURRICANE BAR:

About Beatles in Japan I:
It’s still Beatle mania there. If you pass a hifi store, they play Beatles. And it’s the same with restaurants, shopping malls, elevators, hotels, or on the radio. Beatles everywhere. It’s like they’d just released ”She Loves You”.

About Beatles in Japan II:
We stayed at the Capitol Tokyu Hotel where The Beatles were in 1966. We had their Beatle sandwiches. “Do you want a Club Sandwich Lennon or a Club Sandwich McCartney?”. It was what they ordered to their rooms 38 years ago.

About Mando’s musical competence:
We’re quite lousy musicians. We’re 10.000 times worse than The Hives. They’re so fucking tight. Sometimes when Björn plays a guitar solo, I get next to him to listen and dig…and then I find out that he’s playing the wrong string. That’s how bad we are. We might get the intro for “Sheepdog” right one time out of five. But it doesn’t really matter. When we get high on Mando we rule anyway.

About age:
I’m looking forward to get 24. I wouldn’t want to be 22 again.

About the band’s cocky attitude:
We’re our own biggest fans. We just can stop wonder about how incredibly good we are. I don’t think I’ve listened to anything else than our own demos the last two years. We spend nights listening to our own songs. Which makes it hard for people to get inside the group. And that’s why people find us cocky. Because they’re outside. As soon as they start talking with us, they’re out. Because they don’t understand that Mando Diao is the best band in the world.

About performing live:
Every gig is unique. We’ve got some kind of structure, but anything can happen. And that’s why you don’t tire of the ”Bring ’ Em In” songs, although we must have played them 300 times.

About seeing themselves on video:
We analyse everything. Every show is recorded on video, so we’ve seen it a thousand times. And we don’t get tired of it either.

About not being able to experience Mando Diao live:
When we get a videotape from some MTV festival where we’ve played, and we get to see how good it is…how it looks and what’s happening…then you think, “Shit, I would want to see this for real”. It’s almost like you want to quit to be able to see it.

About all the seasoned pro’s in the business:
People with experience are generally impossible to associate with. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sound mixer, a tour manager, a backline engineer or a manager…they all seem to go on forever with these goddamn stories from the past.

About the difference between ”Bring ’Em In” and ”Hurricane Bar”:
”Bring ’Em In” could have been done much better. There are some great songs on the album…”To China With Love”, ”Sheepdog”, ”Paralyzed” and ”The Band”…true pop classics that never will be written again. And then there were a couple of energised no-tunes. There are maybe three incredible highs on the new record, but there are no lows.

About being here now:
Lennon never looked back. We don’t do that either.

About having two singers:
We can’t count ourselves as good singers, since we can’t sing three songs in a row without sounding worse. That’s why it’s good to switch singer, so you can rest your voice a while. It’s probably more fun to watch as well.

About the audience I:
If a couple goes to a Mando show, the girl wants Björn and the guy starts a fight with Gustaf.

About the audience II:
The girls want to be with us and the guys want to be us. And I can see why…I would easily want to be myself…stand there and front the best band in the world.

About why ”Bring ’Em in” isn’t yet released in England:
They’re afraid of the title as the best music nation in Europe. Of course they can’t let a Swedish fucking band just come and run them over.

About Borlänge:
We’re from Borlänge, so that’s a positive thing.

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Mando Diao - Hurricane Bar