Marina Siertis
For those who don’t know the band can you give us a little background?
Marina Siertis is a Swedish pop band that consists of Martin Löfgren on Vocals, Martin Fridegren on Guitar and André Öberg on Keyboard. Marina Siertis was formed in 2000 and since then we have released 2 full length albums, a couple of EP’s and toured both Europe and the states.
Right now we are doing promotion for our latest album, the much needed second cold war, that is released world wide this week.
So, your new album “The Much Needed Second Cold War” has a very political title to it can we expect you tackle some current events in the album?
On the album we have a number of songs with a political background. At some time at the production of the album we grew tired of artists desperately separating their own opinion out of fear that they will lose a fraction of their fan base. The lyrics of the political songs on the album have to a large extent been written in frustration over the state of the world. The major example is the so called war on terror, where the US as well as other countries in vengeance rolled the dice and blindly struck at the Arabic country at hand. In this case the enormous US military force was released on Afghanistan and Iraq, with unwanted results. Or was the results really unwanted? The governments kept the minimum wage worker in line, through fear of a non existing threat. This is the background to the song “The Much Needed Second Cold War”.
Another song, “American Torture”, is of course based on the events in Abu Ghraib. The song “The Minister is Dead”, concerns the stabbing of the Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh and the way media wolfed down the incident.
To avoid expanding on the subject excessively it is safe to say the you can expect us to tackle some current events in the album.
The influence on the album are wide. The Cure and Depeche Mode are right there but even traces of REM and Radiohead come to mind as well. What were some of your other influences musical and non-musical?
It’s interesting that you are mentioning these bands. Especially The Cure and Depeche Mode are great influences over the years. The influences are always there in the back of your head somehow, but we never think of these when we start to make music. More or less the songs are under development during the whole process and we never really know from the start in which direction a new song will end up.
If you try to write a demo with the aim at sounding as a specific band, it’ll surely end up in the trash can. The music must come genuinely from within you. But Radiohead is a splendid band and the lyrics to abuse is inspired by the REM-song “Why Not Smile”.
How do you go about writing your songs?
As mentioned above, much of the lyrics are written as response to national or international events. In those cases the lyrics usually is written before the music. On this album the music of such songs have been initiated by sitting down with a guitar and just let the music come out. On other songs the music is done first and thereafter the lyrics is written. On “The Much Needed Second Cold War” such lyrics has a tendency of being about individuals and their anger and sorrow. The way of recognizing if the song is any good has been that somewhere around nine in the evening one realizes that one has forgotten eating lunch and dinner. The tunes have just come out without any break out of fear of forgetting ones great ideas.
How do you feel the band has changed over the last eight years?
8 years ago we released our first EP called “View from an Intergalactic Star”. From the beginning the sound was quite much more synth pop. Also the music was recorded in a living room using simple equipment. Today we have our own studio, with professional recording possibilities.
Also we lost a keyboardist about four years ago and gained a guitarist about the same time. This has of course contributed to our musical puzzle. Now the guitar and the electronic sound are coexisting.
Any bands we should be listening to?
We would like to recommend some Swedish acts that we like right now:
Dimbodius, Tarnation Street, Twice a Man and The Knife.
What is the next move for the band? Touring? Recording?
The next move is to promote the new album. This includes interviews, radio shows, touring, promotion events, and you name it. But of course there is also a lot of inspiration to write new songs for our next album and we already have a bunch of demos that we would like to work on.
Interview with Martin Löfgren and André Öberg from Marina Siertis.
By John Siwicki
