Philadelphia Weekly

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Swedish pop-punk/New Wave quintet the Sounds — fronted by the vivacious, Debbie Harry-esque Maja Ivarsson — returns to the Philly area this weekend for the first time in a while, playing a sold-out show at the Note in West Chester on Saturday night behind their forthcoming album Crossing the Rubicon. It’s one of their last headlining gigs before jumping on board as openers for the big No Doubt reunion tour for three months this summer (that tour comes to the Susquehanna Bank Center on June 11th). We caught up with Sounds keyboardist Jesper Anderberg the other afternoon from a tour stop in Boston:

The show on Saturday is sold out, that must be a good feeling.
Yeah, definitely. I don’t think we’ve played that venue before so I don’t know how big it is or anything about it.

Yeah, it’s fairly new, I haven’t been there yet myself.
Isn’t that Bam’s club?

Bam Margera? Yeah.
We know him pretty well. We played his wedding.

You did?
Yeah. A couple years ago.

I just saw his parents waiting in line at Jim’s Steaks on South Street here in Philly not too long ago, lots of people were running up to have their pictures taken with them.
Yeah, they’re the world’s most famous parents.

You just got here to the States for this short headlining tour, right?
Yes, that’s right, we got here over the weekend.

So are you terrified of the swine flu?
Naw. I mean, it’s like, I heard 60 people died in Mexico City, but 60 people out of like 15 million. You have a better chance of getting hit by a car. You have to be aware of it, but I think the panic is more dangerous than the actual flu.

When was the last time you were in Philly?
I think it actually was for Bam’s wedding, or it was a place called the North Star. We did a small Thanksgiving show there. We’ve done some other shows in Philadelphia.

Do you like it here?
Yeah, I really like Philly. I think it’s one of the better cities in the U.S., like it’s a more European city. You can actually walk around there a lot and there’s a lot of nice neighborhoods, you don’t have to drive everywhere. It’s big but it’s not like huge. I like it.

You have a new album coming out — is the set you’re playing now heavy on newer material?
We’re trying to mix it up, since people haven’t really heard the new album yet. There’s like six new songs and maybe five from the old albums.

Is there a difference in the way you approach a show if you’re doing your own show or you’re opening for No Doubt or something?
I mean, not too much, but we have to vary the sets a little bit. If we only get 30 minutes…when we play ourselves we have these seven-minutes-long remix versions of songs, and if you have 30 minutes maybe that’s not the best way to appeal to a crowd, so we scratch those off the list. But we try to do the show the way we always do it, because I think that’s more honest. I mean, we were playing with Fall Out Boy in Paris — that was one of the shows that got sold out really quickly, which means that Fall Out Boy had a lot of fans there, so when we played there we went up a little bit, maybe, arrogant to play songs that we really liked and the crowd kinda turned a little bit against us.

Really?
Yeah, but they’re French, so…[laughs]. That stuff, it might not be so fun when you’re onstage and you feel the crowd’s not really with you, but like a week afterwards it’s kinda funny.

When you say a crowd turned against you, what do you mean? Do they just boo, or do they throw things at you?
Yeah, both of those.

Has it ever gotten scary?
Not really. It’s been maybe scary in a positive way when a lot of people get onstage and it’s almost a riot. That’s great, I love when people get onstage.

Do you ever get handed gifts from fans?
Yeah, that happens quite often. In London a few weeks ago, some girl gave us shower caps with a lotta stuff written on it, and we get scarves that people make with some quotes from our songs, a lot of cookies.