TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2003
Interview by Cameron Cook
Photo by Paul Stefansson
Singapore Sling is one of the coolest bands I have ever seen. I had only heard of them two days prior to their show at Central Park’s Summerstage and anyone who is so true to their garage rock persona that they’d don a boxy jean jacket in the sweltering New York summer heat deserves my utter admiration. The band also has a guy whose sole responsibility is to mumble along to the songs while nonchalantly shaking a pair of maracas. Thank you, Rock God, for answering my prayers. Any band that can bring the ’60s garage noise while employing a fuckin’ maracas player deserves props.
With the sudden rash of Scandinavian bands that has taken the music world by storm recently, Iceland seems to be second only to Sweden (see Hives, Soundtrack of Our Lives, International Noise Conspiracy et al.) in fine indie exports. In addition to the obvious Björk, we now have the likes of Sigur Rós, Trabant, Múm and Minus gaining fans and acclaim outside of their hometown of Reykjavík. Newest to the batch are Singapore Sling who has that dirty garage feel and tunes with rock ‘n’ roll riffs that make you want to rip up your 501’s and wear sunglasses after midnight. The Curse of Singapore Sling is their debut on NYC-based Stinky Records, and the band recently wrapped up their first ever U.S. tour and played at least ten shows locally in the span of a few weeks. Singapore Sling is too raucous and too cool to stay under the radar for very long.
I met with frontman Henrik Björnsson at NYC’s Pink Pony, a cozy little coffee house in the LES. Other band members (Helgi Petursson on guitar and keyboards, Einar Kristjansson on guitar, Toggi Gumundsson on bass, Bjarni Johannsson on drums and Siggi Shaker on maracas and tambourine) were most likely recovering from hangovers (I hear they like to party) while Henrik was holding down the press duties. As soon as he walked in, tall and solemn, he immediately reminded me of a Scandinavian Sid Vicious (if such a thing is even fathomable). As we chatted in the window boxes, Henrik was confident and composed while we touched on subjects such as his native country, the Velvet Underground, and the curse of Singapore Sling.
OK, let’s start simple. How did you get the name Singapore Sling?
It was a couple of years ago. I was going through tons of different names. I was searching for this film called Singapore Sling by this great director. I read about it somewhere, but I couldn’t find it. Then it was left burning in my head. When I started the band it seemed to fit and sounded good.
How did you guys meet up and start playing music together?
Well, in late 1999, I had been recording a lot of demos on 4-tracks with guitar, drum machines, bass, keyboards and stuff like that. I wrote a lot of songs and I wanted to play live. I played some songs for a friend, whose music I really liked, and we got a band together for rehearsal. The line-up has changed a lot in the past one and half years.
Really?
Yeah, it was just the two of us for a long time. About 20 people have been in the band, but the current line-up has been like this for a little over a year. The band is about three years old. Our line-up now seems to be good and we’re getting along well. We never had any auditions, we were just friends. We never put any ads in magazines or stuff like that.
How is the music scene in Iceland?
The rock scene there is almost always the same people. A lot of people are in more than one band. It’s funny because we are playing Central Park SummerStage on Saturday, for Icelandic Day. They picked three bands, and it so happens that we’re all friends, and we all rent the same rehearsal room. It’s a funny coincidence. The music scene is pretty good, but since there aren’t so many people, there are a lot of people in the same bands.
It seems like with all these bands coming from Scandinavia all of a sudden, like the Hives and such, people are flocking there, music-wise. Do you think that’s the case with the Icelandic scene?
I don’t know much about the Scandinavian scene. The Icelandic scene doesn’t really have a lot to do with that, I don’t think. It’s something that started with the Sugarcubes in the ’80s and now there’s a band like Sigur Rós. I think people have a bit of interest in Iceland as a country, and also in the music. So I think that, that is really separate from the Scandinavian scene.
How did you get signed to Stinky?
A friend of ours, Adam Shore, who is now working for Vice Records came to Airwaves [the big annual Iceland music festival] last October, and the October before that. He saw us play and really liked us. He contacted us. We gave him some CDs, and he gave one to Sabrina [Silverberg, CEO of Stinky Records] and she loved it.
When Singapore Sling first started, when you were changing band members around and stuff, were you regarding the band as a career move or just a hobby?
I’ve made music for quite a while, and I’ll always be making music. I’ve always liked music, and it’s been really, really important to me. But when I was first writing music on my 4-track, I had no idea it would be my career. I hoped it would be someday. But I didn’t really think about that. I just wanted to make a band, and see if we could play a gig somewhere. We got one, and that seemed like something. You know, we’ve been going one step at a time. We never thought that far ahead, we just wanted to do something that we liked.
Is the SummerStage show your first NYC show?
[Nods]
Are you excited?
Yeah, of course. It’s going to be a daytime gig, which is new for us. I hope it doesn’t rain.
For the gigs that you’ve played outside of America, what’s the crowd reaction like?
Well, we’ve only played in Iceland and the United States. We came here last March for the South by Southwest festival, and it actually went pretty good. In Iceland, the reaction has been pretty good as well. Some people hate us, some people love us, and some people don’t know who we are. Now we have a certain fan base in Iceland. Certain people take the effort to come to our shows. I suspect that they like us and that’s why they show up.
Who exactly constitutes your Icelandic fanbase? Since the scene there is so tight-knit, are they people you see all the time who come to see all the other local bands, or your friends, or people who have a specific interest in Singapore Sling?
First of all, we call up all our friends and say, ‘Please come to our gig, we don’t want to be embarrassed by playing in front of three people!’ [laughs] That’s how we started out. But now, we’re staring to notice people coming to our shows that we’ve never seen before. The scene there is so small that if you go to a concert you know you’re going to bump into the same people. When people that you don’t know show up, that’s good. You don’t want to play to the same people all the time. It gets boring.
Your first album, The Curse of Singapore Sling just came out in the States in June. How did the whole process of making that album go? It was your first time recording an LP. Did you have any snafus, problems?
We had loads of problems. That’s why it’s called The Curse of Singapore Sling.
Oh, I see.
There were strange noises coming from the guitar amps and light bulbs exploding in the studio. On our first day recording, the tape machine we were using broke down – just endless things like that. It was pretty painful, but it turned out pretty good, so we’re happy. As for the writing, some of the songs are pretty old, all from the same period. Some of them we’ve been playing since we first started. We only recorded 10 songs. I wanted to release an album that wasn’t too long. I don’t like albums that have like, 20 songs on them. Ten songs is the optimum length. For the cover art and everything, we had a record label in Iceland who gave us a budget, and basically we got to do whatever we wanted. We hired the engineers, and the graphic designers and we gave them all photographs. It was pretty lo-fi, but we like to do everything ourselves.
How would you describe Singapore Sling’s sound?
I don’t know. I hate this question [grins].
Sorry!
No, that’s OK, it’s a good question [pauses]. I don’t know. I think it’s very good for drinking. And driving. It’s the perfect soundtrack for driving in a Cadillac from New York to California in the middle of the night. And you will make it in one night.
With such a short album? You’d listen to it 50,000 times until you reach southern California.
The sound is kind of – our music has catchy riffs, you know. It’s cool! It’s great! It’s beautiful!
It’s sort of a template for what is popular in rock now, especially coming from Scandinavia. That garage rock, lo-fi vibe.
When we first started out, there wasn’t anything like this. I don’t even think it’s a scene. It’s just that rock ‘n’ roll music is getting more focused, and getting better at the moment. I hope people are kind of getting sick of Blink-182 and that kind of stuff. I think the Icelandic scene has been quite quirky and eccentric. People talk about the landscape and what an influence that is. It doesn’t really have an influence on me.
What bands do you think inspire your sound?
Just bands that I like. I think the main inspiration is the music you listened to when you first decided you wanted to [make music] yourself. I like a lot of underground stuff like the Cramps and Suicide. There are bands today that inspire me too. I heard a song on the radio and I liked it. That doesn’t happen a lot. Someone gives me a CD or something, and I like it. You realize that music is getting a lot better the more you listen to.
This is my favorite little question I like to ask last: If you were one of the first people colonized and launched off to Mars, and you only had room in your little space pod for one CD, which one would you take?
You mean something that would suit the atmosphere?
No. Just any old album you couldn’t part with.
I think I’d have to be a little cliché and say The Velvet Underground and Nico, because it’s one of the best records I’ve ever heard in my entire life.
That’s actually a very frequent answer to that question.
I could have tried to come up with something else, but I’d have been lying. I love that record.
