Monday 3 February 2014

Interview with Alpaca Sports


                                                             Press photo by Per Möller

I first came across Alpaca Sports a couple of years ago. Its one of those rare moments where you instantly fall in love. They come from Gothenburg and they make the most beautiful pop, sweet, cute, adorable pop music. They soon release their debut, which its truly haunting, a pop masterpiece! I shamelessly admit that they are my favorite band right now and watching them live would make me the happiest girl in the world. Andreas Jonsson was kind enough to answer my questions.

You write amazing pop songs, the one after the other. Is it so damn easy to write a perfect pop song?

Thank you! Haha well seriously, it’s so damn hard! We spend so many hours on each song trying to find the right arrangement, finding the right words, use the right instruments, sounds and so on. Just to give the impression that it was recorded in thirty minutes I guess, haha. I find it can be easy to lose the straightforwardness during the song making process and to complicate things, so I always get very happy when people think writing popsongs is easy for us.

Your music is sweet and romantic and heartbreaking. Is that a way to express your own personality?
It’s definitely a way to express my feelings. But oh, I don’t think I want to call myself sweet and romantic? That’s for others to do, haha. But I’m very naïve and I’m addicted to romantic movies, I admit that.

"Sealed with a Kiss" - your first album is released in a few days. What are your expectations from the debut?
Yes, it’s finally ready! I’m very excited about it but I’ve never released an album before so I don’t know what to expect really. We just put all our effort into making a record we could feel proud about. Hopefully others will like it too, that would make me very happy!

Which are the features that make Swedish pop music so distinct?

I don’t know about characteristics but I think a lot of Swedes are good at making pop music and I’m sure there are many explanations for that. I think one could be that kids get the chance to try different instruments in an early age which encourage people to start bands. There are different music schools which you can sign up for and at least when I grew up music was a compulsory subject in school. So, music is always present and many generations here in Sweden have been brought up with songs from bands like Abba, Beatles, Elvis and more. After a while you learn which music buttons to push maybe?

Do you hang out with other Swedish bands?

I’m not sure we have that culture anymore here in Gothenburg where whole bands go out together hanging out at the same place. I can miss that sometimes! But of course I meet members from other bands from time to time. At the moment I listen a lot to The Electric Pop Group, I think they’re fantastic.

If Alpaca Sports were a film, a book and a painting which ones would they be?

Film: Cinema Paradiso
Book: The Notebook? haha
Painting: One from our wonderful friend Ray Kimura!

Gig plans? You announced your gig at the Copenhagen Popfest!

We’ll play in Milano and Rome on February 22-23! And we’ll play at two Popfests so far this spring, Birmingham and Copenhagen. I hope we can announce more gigs soon!

And last.. is Johnny Marr your hero?
He’s definitely one of my heroes. But my biggest hero is Gunvor Jonsson, my dear mother.

 http://alpacasports.bandcamp.com
 https://www.facebook.com/alpacasports

Alpaca Sports premier today their video for new single "Just like Johnny Marr", shoot in Japan! Watch the video below and watch out for debut release on the 24th Feb (Luxury).


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