Coming to France for a promotional tour around their new album LoveCop, Hannes Irengård (guitar) and Per Andreasson (drums) willingly took part in our interview. Between memories of Taratata and rock tinged with disco and neon, this is the story of a wild discussion.
The last time we met was in 2019, and today we are meeting again because your new record LoveCop is coming out on the 7th of June. From the first sight of the cover and the different videos, we can see you guys are going full neon, lasers, and 80’s for this record. What were your main influences for this album?
Per Andreasson (drums): I don’t think we started out saying that it would be an 80’s record again, like Club Majesty (2019). We wanted to do a kind of Club Majesty but also bring the kind of songs we had on our other albums. Once it was recorded, we needed to give it a name. We named it LoveCop because it was the song that stood out the most and we thought it could be turned out into something visual.
Hannes Irengård (guitar): What’s funny with this band is that it feels like we are building the tracks in front of the train. We don’t plan things. Things happened, and even though it sounds very pretentious to say that… A lot of things just happen with this band. We never sat down, we never had a band meeting saying that we wanted to do a kind of an 80’s album.
How do you work when recording an album ?
Hannes: We work from home on ideas, and then we send them to each other actually.
Do you always work like this?
Hannes: We tried some other ways as well.
Per: We tried also with everybody meeting at the studio to write the songs from scratch. It was not for us. We also tried jamming together in a rehearsal studio, but once again it was not for us. Even though I know a hook from “Tommy-Gun” came from one of these sessions.
Hannes: We tried this kind of session and there were a couple of happy accidents like this one but generally we work separately. We gather ideas on our own and then we put them together.
Per: We don’t write jammy music. We condense all our ideas, so by the time it reaches our album it is really clear what everybody does.
The way you write music is really organized.
Per: It is, but it is also a very painstaking process. We do know what we are doing but we don’t know how we get to our final songs’ versions. We know where we want to go but…
Hannes: Does that make sense ? (laughs)
Per: It’s like: “Let’s go travel! Where? Let’s go to Paris? How do we get there? We’ll know when we are there.“
Hannes: The funny thing is that the four of us know exactly when we arrive.
Per: For this album we had a vision. We wanted it to be a gathering of all our previous records. I think we did that with LoveCop.
In the end you still have a record and you are happy with it.
Hannes: We are very happy with what came out. Did you hear the whole thing?
Yes, we’ve been listening to it for the last few days, especially in the morning on my way to work. You feel very cheerful and happy while listening to it. It is very catchy with a lot of catchy choruses and hooks. It also gathers a lot of your previous records.
Hannes: Thank you!
Let’s get back to the recording process: how long did it take to record the album?
Hannes: 6 weeks. The four of us were in the studio for 10 days.
Per: Then we went back for 14 days to finish everything.
Is it usually the time you take to record your songs?
Per: This time it was more efficient. I think it was a little quicker than for the previous albums. We were in the studio and we asked ourselves: “What is it that we want to do?“. We had trouble in the past bringing the sound, the atmosphere that we have live, to the record. It’s what we say: when you see us onstage you get what we do; on the record it is more difficult.
We did the drums, two guitars and the bass “live” in the studio. I think you can hear it on the record. We did mess around a bit and had some fun, but it sounds great.
There is a live energy into your songs on LoveCop. Sometimes between the stage and the album, you can hear the difference between live and recording.
Hannes: I think it is really true in rock music. Rock n’roll music is so much about energy and it is hard to get it across your speakers. But I think we did a good job on that.
Let’s talk about the song “Wow! Wow! Wow!”. This song has a very 70’s vibe with the brass. Was it real brass?
Per: Actually we have this friend of ours in Malmo who is a very good musician. He came into the studio and asked if we wanted to do something with brass.
Was it something that you wanted to add to the song?
Per: When we did the demo Adam (Grahn, vocals) thought it needed brass and I did not agree at first, you don’t add brass to a rock song! But in the end it worked out pretty well. We did two versions: a normal one and one with the saxophone. And we asked ourselves which one we preferred and everybody said the one with the saxophone.
I really like this song, especially the “Beatles” part in the middle.
Will you play it live with brass?
Hannes: We’ll figure something out! We will know when we get there. (laughs)
Per: See? This is why I didn’t want to have brass or saxophone!
You’re playing a different music than what is played on the rock radio, and especially when we think about Sweden: it’s either The Hives, or Ghost. How do you see yourself on the Swedish rock scene, and on the worldwide rock scene?
Hannes: When it comes to the Swedish scene… Actually there is no Swedish scene. No one gives a shit about the scene or the music. Maybe I’m pushing it too hard.
Per : I think with Royal Republic we are building something but not in Sweden. I think we have a lot of rock fans, but we are also dividing them because of our music. Sweden has a good and healthy rock scene but a lot of people want us to sound like AC/DC or Foo Fighters. Some of them only do pentatonic scales and that’s it.
We have been through 15 years of disinterest and negligence from Sweden towards us.
Do you receive more interest from other countries like France, Germany or The United States ?
Hannes: Yes, way more!
Per: We do have a very good fanbase and we really appreciate it. It’s good because it’s finally becoming something, we are getting there in Sweden. But we are not getting the big TV or shows there yet. We have a lot of media meetings just like we do right now in France or Germany, but not in Sweden. We don’t do promotional days like this in Sweden. France is probably the only country where we do that.
It must be frustrating to not receive attention in Sweden ?
Per: I used to be frustrated but not anymore. At some point the media will come to my door to get an interview and I will be like… (flipping the finger).
In France you’ve played on TV because you were on the show Taratata in 2022. How was the experience?
Hannes: I think it was the most fun I’ve had on a show. It was great partly because it is one of the few TV shows where you get to play live. We’ve been doing some TV shows several times but most of the time it’s playback. I thought it was amazing that this show is so popular and that the people watch it.
Per: The whole vibe of the set was: “How are we doing this?” and everybody knew how to handle live music. They do that every day, it’s their job and they do it perfectly. Such nice people, such a nice night. I was a little bit tipsy the whole time and it was a good day.
It’s one of the last TV shows in France that broadcast rock music. The most interesting thing is that it mixes up bands and artists that usually would not play together.
Per: We played “Are You Gonna Go My Way” with Ko Ko Mo on that show and we liked doing it so much that we did it for the whole tour after that.
Hannes: We came to Paris the day before so we met and rehearsed with Ko Ko Mo for the first time. We played through the entire song only once and then we went for a beer. (laughs)
Per: It felt good and natural.
Hannes: It is also a song that’s almost part of our DNA, we all grew up with it.
Let’s talk about your music videos for the album LoveCop. How did the ideas come for these different videos?
Per : We’ve been working for a long time with Leo (Åkesson) and we decided to keep working with him as we liked what he did and how he made us look. For the pandemic it was complicated to shoot our videos. Jonas (Almén, bass player of the band) shot our videos and he is not a videomaker you know. But he did a fantastic job! I don’t think any of us understand how long it took for him to shoot the videos.
For the new record we’ve decided to rent a big warehouse that was empty and cheap. We could do anything in it: hang blinds, put fire in it. So we shot 5 videos in two days in the same warehouse.
Leo‘s crew built the set, used a production company for the fabric and stuff… We came two days from 9AM to 11PM to shoot everything. It’s amazing how the videos turned out to be.
For “My House”, we really wanted it to be the summary of our career in a video. We used the same set, the same warehouse.
Hannes: Leo has been with us for such a long time. At the beginning he used to send us the different versions of the videos. Now it’s just: “Here’s the video, so shut up”. (laughs)
Per: We also started to do these “marathon videos“, so we do everything at the same time. For Club Majesty we wanted to do that and we worked with Tommy who used to do the lights and he is now doing the shooting onstage live. We want to create a visual trademark for our band.
You are doing a festival tour this summer in France, how do you feel about this tour?
Per: We love to tour in France because we can drink at any time in the day and nobody judges you. (laughs)
Hannes: We are very excited about France these days. It feels fresh to us, and it feels great to see that after so much time of building something, it finally works.
Per: We were very surprised to receive such a warm welcome from French fans, we did not expect it.
You will also play at the Zenith in November.
Per: We opened there for The Offspring. So we are obviously as big as The Offspring. (laughs)
Last question : we are RockUrLife, so what rocks your life ?
Per: My 3 and a half toddler daughter and being back with a new record, meeting new people, being in Paris.
Hannes: Right now it’s my clematis that’s currently growing in my garden.
Website: royalrepublic.net
