Kindsight are a charming proposition, the Danish group have carved out swooning jangle pop songs over the past few years, detailing growing up and breaking up, they have captured hearts and got feet moving. Their debut album, Swedish Punk, released this past February is the perfect soundtrack to hazy summer days.
Kindsight formed when Nina Hyldgaard Rasmussen and guitarist Søren Svensson bonded over a shared love of The Sugarcubes. They went on to recruit bass player Anders Prip and drummer Johannes Jacobsen and over the past few years have earned a reputation within Copenhagen’s scene.
With its see-sawing rushing chorus and twitchy almost mathy percussion of ‘Hi-Fi’ is an insidious earworm. While the mid-tempo ‘The Sun is always in your eyes’ wistfully hits that sweet point between jangle pop and hook-laden bittersweet melodies somewhere between Mazzy Star and Camera Obscura with a side order of Scandi pop.
‘Don’t You Grow Up’ springs into life with chiming guitars, gorgeous rhythms, decorated with Rasmussen’s effortlessly swooning vocal that encapsulates nostalgic optimism of childhood, it’s a gorgeous song. This was the first song the band ever wrote together. Written in “a time when we thought to be a sunny teenage rock band, you had to write songs about teenagers in the sun,’
We caught up with Kindsight to find out more about what inspires them.
Hi, how are you today?
We’re good! The weather is great and we are playing in Malmø tonight. Not much to complain about.
How did you meet?
We met at something called a Højskole in Denmark. It’s a school where you can study what interests you and live there for half a year.
I saw you were all fans of the Sugarcubes what was it about their sound that inspired you?
It probably was their playful, charming and uncompromising sound. Most of all, it was the opportunity to play a great song with a couple of friends and that pretty quickly turned into a band.
What’s the music scene like back home?
Here in Copenhagen where we live, there are a lot of different great venues and communities for all kinds of music and after the lockdown, it feels more vivid again – so that’s nice. Even though we love the Copenhagen scene we also feel we have a special connection with the Swedish indie scene. Obviously, because we’re on a great Swedish label, but we also feel that the music somehow fits incredibly well in the Swedish scene.
How would you describe your music in five words?
Kind, honest, nostalgic, slightly-sunny-slightly-sad, band.
What was lockdown like for you?
It was actually quite ok! When everything was closed we were about to record our album. The lockdown meant that we couldn’t do much else. We had our little social bubble in the band and with our producer. The lockdown also caused us some trouble though. All our usual rehearsal spaces were shut down. Luckily we could lend a new unopened, unheated garage venue. So we spent January and February preparing for the recording with the biggest jacket available and the coffee machine as the only source of heat. Great fun!
Can you tell us about your new album? Where was it recorded?
When we were finished preparing in the cold garage we went to a great, warm and comfortable studio in Copenhagen called Grapehouse studios. We wanted to do it in a manner where we had time to try ideas out and experiment with different sound designs. So we had a total of six intense days recording most tracks together and then a couple of months of visiting our producer and noodling around with guitar layers, vocals, percussion, woodwinds, and other fun stuff.
There’s a real coming of age charm about the songs something like ‘The Sun is always shining’ puts me in mind of looking back on the endless summers of your youth, what was the inspiration behind it?
The song is really about the sort of small scale rebellions you can only really achieve as a youth. Like spending lunch money with your friends in silly places. Or, as is the case in the song pretending to run away from home, to buy some cool clothes. That sort of temporary feeling of complete freedom is hard to replicate but I feel it has been quite powerful when I was younger. And I did steal way too much shit back then too (sorry mom)!
I love the guitar sound you’ve achieved, geeky question but what kind of guitars/pedals do you use?
We love geeky questions! Nina plays a Fano GF6 and Søren plays a 68’ Fender Mustang. We used mainly those two guitars for the recordings as well as some different acoustics and some Danelectros owned by our producer, Adam.
Guitar pedals: We used some different overdrives – a Bluesbreaker-clone that Søren built, Greer Lightspeed, Fulltone OCD and a ProCo Turbo Rat.
Compression, reverbs and such were mostly added in post. We used a Walrus Audio Julia for some subtle vibrato on several tracks, it’s especially noticeable on ‘Panic Juice’, ‘Trampoline to Me’ and ‘Weekend Thieves’. For gnarly fuzz sounds Søren used a Fairfield Circuitry Unpleasant Surprise which is a stupid fun pedal. The swells on ‘Terminal Daze 2′ is a loop playing on a Boss DD-7 into an all-wet EHX Holy Grail Max.
Amps include a Fender 68’ Custom Princeton, a 70’s Fender Super Twin (recorded in stereo with the Princeton on some tracks) and a Fender Blues Deluxe.
What’s on your playlist?
We actually made a playlist each on our Spotify profile with smashing hits! It’s a collection of long-time favourites and new musical discoveries. You will find Björk, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Silver Jews and Big Thief among a lot of other things. You can find it on our profile. And then we listen to Kraftwerk when we are driving far.
What would be your dream collaboration?
I’m afraid we’ve got differing opinions about that. Me (bass player), I would love to feature a verse from John Cooper Clarke. Søren (guitarist) thinks a Yo La Tengo collab would be the greatest thing to happen to music since Yo La Tengo.
What’s the best band you have played with so far?
Last time we played in Stockholm at Hus 7 a band called Fews played a show at the end of the evening. That was an incredibly intense experience and everybody was speechless afterwards. Søren didn’t say anything for a couple of hours.
Are you playing any shows/festivals this summer?
We’re working on it! We hope to come around in both Denmark, Sweden and Germany in the late summer!
Thanks for your time
