A Free Man

We head back to the capital today for something a little bit different. In our tour of Sweden we’ve chatted with representatives from the Swedish Electronica and New-New Wave scenes. Today Rickard and Joel of the wonderfully named Robert Church and the Holy Community introduce us to some of the great Lo-Fi music coming out of Sweden. Their newest full-length, “Le Rouge” is out on U.S. label Series Two - a great vehicle for the genre right now.

AFM: First things first. Can you introduce yourselves and tell me how you guys got started?

RC:We started out in the summer 2006. Both of us had been in this other band for some time and the music were heading in a weird direction…lots of syncopes, it ended up sounding like Dreamtheater. That didn´t feel right, we wanted to do something more simple and lo-fi, so we wrote and recorded a few songs, that later became our first EP “Low at the disco” (Best Kept Secret). After that we just quit the other band.

AFM: What’s the story behind the name?

RC: It was a joke at first about this super-christian guy named Robert Church…and he, of course, had his holy community… Too much beer, but we think it sounds really good though.

AFM: I hear echoes of a lot of great lo-fi artists in your music, like Beat Happening, Guided By Voices and Yo La Tengo. Who do you consider strong musical influences?

RC: We like stuff like Bob Hund, Firehose, Ramones, Dinosaur Jr, The Haircuts…

AFM: Robert Church and the Holy Community have been very prolific, three EPs and an LP in the last year. How do you maintain that pace of songwriting and recording?

RC: The songwriting came very easy for us from the start and it has been like that for some time now. After the Series Two release we have not written anything, but we are back in the studio right now so more will probably come. We hope to be able to keep up the same pace in the future. As long as it´s fun to write and record we will keep on doing it.

AFM: Until the last few years, most of what I heard coming out of Sweden was either slightly scary death metal, The Cardigans, or Abba. But lately there’s some really great Swedish music getting some exposure - Peter Bjorn & John, Jose Gonzalez and I’m From Barcelona to name three. What’s changed in Sweden that’s inspired so many great new bands?

Guess lots of people are tired of Abba and all of that, we are. But Sweden has always had good indie-bands. The difference is now there are a lot of good bands coming out of smaller labels. Bands releasing the music on their own labels. You don´t have to have a major label to reach people any more, that is a good thing. And there are a lot of indie-clubs popping everywhere, new places to play.

AFM: What other Swedish bands are making great lo-fi pop similar to you guys? Who else should we be listening to?

- There are a few on Series two…Oh! Custer, Tafra and Klas to name a few. The Medalist (not so lo-fi but good) on Cloudberry Records, The San Marinos… Horowitz from the UK are really great! You should check them out. We were supposed to play with them in April but we had to cancel that show, unfortunately.

AFM: Most Swedish bands that I’ve heard record in English rather than their native language. Why do you think this is the case? Have you recorded any tracks in Swedish?

RC: We have not recorded anything in Swedish yet. Guess that most of the bands we listen to write in english, maybe we are influenced by that. English sounds more melodic…and you reach more people. If we were writing in Swedish maybe lots of the foreign blogs and stuff wouldn´t write that much about us.

AFM: I know that you guys are from Stockholm, but I always spend time on the west coast of Sweden - what do you know about bands from from Gothenburg or Malmo?

RC: Check out Springfactory, The Electric Pop group from Gothenburg and Oh! Custer, Brotherhood of Broken Hearts from Malmö/Lund.

AFM: What’s been the biggest “break” or success for the band thus far?

RC: We have not had any “break” as you call it so far. But having almost all our songs we ever written released by indie labels all over the world is really great to us. We are still waiting for our big “break” ☺

AFM: If you could play your record for any artist, living or dead, who would it be?

RC: That would have to be the multi-talented Swedish hi-fi artist Rolf Pilotti.

AFM: What’s next for Robert Church and the Holy Community?

RC: We are going to record a new EP this spring or maybe a full-length…and hopefully get some gigs. Plus we will be on a few compilation-releases this year, keep your eyes open.

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Thanks to Rickard & Joel for taking the time for a virtual chat. Here are a couple of tracks from their recent release:

MP3: Robert Church & The Holy Community - “Sunday Love”
MP3: Robert Church & The Holy Community - “Train To Asia”

Robert Church & The Holy Community’s most recent LP “Le Rouge” is available for $13 US from Series Two (seriestworecords[at]gmail.com). Previous releases are available from the band’s myspace page.