Everywhere

Swedish post pop outfit Everywhere release their debut EP, ‘American Grandeur’ in the UK on October 20th via Trompe L’oeill Records. They are the latest irresistible act to break out of Stockholm’s legendary music scene, that has produced everyone from The Hives to the Knife, Concretes and Jose Gonzalez in recent years. Striving to redefine the ‘indie band,’ they pull together the two sides of Swedish music obsession with grunge rock guitar clashing with shimmering piano and epic hooks that Max Martin would be proud of. Friends since school with now world wide phenomenon Avicii, Everywhere are moving through the rock pop and dance worlds of their homeland with characteristic elegance. Their first release ‘Eddie’ told the story of lead vocalist and song-writer Max Berga’s former girlfriend, sucked into the fashion industry and spat out. It received huge blog support and Hype Machine’d its way around the world, with smart remixes propelling into the ears of music fans across genres. Next single ‘Soldier’ sees the return of fellow Swede Oliver Nelson, acclaimed for recent remixes of both Kim Casarion and Royal Concept, plus Swedish wunderkind and Avicii approved Jakob Liedholm. The ‘American Grandeur’ EP features ‘Eddie’ and 3 more crushing melodic gems in Off You Go, Feels So Good and Pretend. Produced by Mark Needham (Killers, Imagine Dragons), Everywhere made their first UK appearance at the NME Awards tour after party this year. They have supported Palma Violets and Django Django . Discovered by legendary A&R Kurt Makarov, Everywhere are signed to his Trompe L’oeill Records. The band is fronted by Max’s cheekbones on lead vocals, Filip Severinson on piano, Marcel Karlsson on guitar, Mikael Ingegaard on bass and Robin Waernquist on drums. ‘Soldier’ is another hook laden epic with a controversial video featuring much nudity and mud as Max rolls around in the dirt with other naked people in the pursuit of his art. While he describes his band as post pop, the charismatic singer’s features could best be described as post-Jagger. “I started thinking of men these day,” says Max of writing the songs, “As a man, you’re exposed to an ideal, be a pumped up footballer, posing in your underwear as well as becoming the perfect father. There is a lot rightly discussed about he pressure on women from the media, but it’s the same for men in many ways. “So I had this idea of men as soldiers, going into life fighting, with a rifle on their shoulder. And then the video…..” The video was “the worst shoot in history,” according to Max – “We shot it Stockholm and first built a forest in a studio, filled with dirt. I was naked, greased up in a baby oil to make my skin look right with three naked girls massaging me. That was the fun part. “Then we took it outside to the Stockholm swamps, in the middle of winter. I was crawling around for hours a day. Then we had to shoot the underwater scenes, so we rented a house with a pool and the director made me jump off the high board and into the water about 200 times. I was supposed to be dead so if my finger twitched at all on impact, we had to do it all over again. “I mean, I was nude for hours on end. I called the guys doing the editing a few weeks ago and I could hear them all just laughing uncontrollably over phone. I realised they had been dealing with hours of footage of me rolling around with no clothes on. That sort of thing is challenging for my rock star ego.” Max was working a model agent when he picked up a guitar, taught himself to play and write songs. A Michael Jackson fan as a kid, his mother was a ballerina at the Stockholm Opera House and young Max would spend hours behind the scenes, soaking up the classical influence, the mother load of the epic grandeur of his songwriting. “Mid 90s glamour with a British twist was a big influence. ” he says, ” So Oasis, but Nirvana and even KISS too. “I had loads of free time,” he admits to not finding booking models the most demanding or creatively satisfying job, “So I had a few songs and put ads in the paper to find a band. I got loads of responses to the demos I posted online, loads of old of rockers turned up, but we got a great band, bonded musically and personally and we flew to the US to record. “The sound just came together. A 9 fingered jazz pianist (Severinson) walked in to the audition and started hammering away on the keys. I liked the sound of that and the guitars clashing.” A heady mix of pop, rock, grunge, style and iconic aspirations, the band was named after the pronouncement of legendary Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown, an outspoken 1960s campaigner for women’s sexual freedom whose mantra was “Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.” It also reflects the ambition of band revelling in acclaim but expecting to transcend it. “There’s no point aspiring to play Stockholm for the rest of our lives,” shrugs Max, “We want stadiums, tens of thousands screaming for us in fields around the world, our songs surging out of radios across the globe. We want to be Everywhere.” Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.