How the songs came about
Here's a little story for every song with some interesting facts about how and where they were recorded and written, who did what and so on.
EMPIRE - The chorus for "Empire" came to me when I was out on a walk. It just so happened I was walking in 89 bpm tempo at the time and the words and melody of the chorus just sort of materialized. It' s pretty rare that it happens that way and it's always a thrill when it does happen. The song was really given extra punch by the brilliant hornarrangement in the intro - can't remember if it was Martin or Tobbe who came up with it, but I don't think it matters all that much as they have this weird sort of synchronicity going on when they write the arrangements. The really feed off of eachother. Frank added the icing on the cake with the pianomelody in the chorus and Bamma scorched up the studio with his toast.
NATURAL - For this album I really wanted to try to expand our sound and diversify the songwriting as much as possible. So I invited Bamma and Anders to take a more active role in the songwriting and production of the album. I asked Anders if he had any good riddims in stock. The song "Natural" was one of them. It has a groove I would never have come up with myself, just check out the unique drumpattern. I wrote the melody and lyrics in a very short time and the vocals you hear in the verses are left intact from the demoversion of the song I recorded initially; they were recorded sort of on the fly in just one take. Sometimes that's all you need!
HIGH SOCIETY - I'm particularly proud of the song "High Society", I think it's one of the songs I'm most happy with lyrically. I really spent a lot of time writing them, weighing every word carefully. I often work on lyrics while on late-night walks and "High Society" took quite a few walks before I was content with the message. The song started with the bassline, which to me is the defining musical element in the song. I tried making the sound of the song a little dreamy and ambient with elements like the bouncing synth-echo in the prechorus and I think it suceeded. Charlotte came up with the great backingvocal arrangement and Petter's idea of using castanettes in the ending of the song really added extra character. Frank played the sparse, dreamy solo piano at the end and Sven added extremely bouncy organs - what a dynamic duo!
ONE FINE DAY - "One Fine Day" was written in about 10 minutes flat in Kamala Beach, Thailand. I was lying on the beach when the simple, almost naive melody came to me. I went to the bungalow and I had a video of me singing and playing the song on acoustic guitar recorded on my digital camera 10 minutes later, lyrics and all. Quite extraordinary. In the final arrangement the gospel-like vocals were sung by not only me, Charlotte, Linda and Christian; Petter and Frank both sung their hearts out on the track. Frank really has a fantastic voice. He started out by adding a very high falsetto which blew my mind. Then he added a harmony on top of that (which I didn't think was possible). Then he actually added yet another top harmony... When we had a chance to get Elijah Prophet to perform on the album, "One Fine Day" felt like a natural choice. Elijah recorded his vocals in Jamaica and ended up writing two new verses for the song - for which we are very grateful indeed. At the time I recorded the guitar for this track I had just gotten a Boss Auto-wah (a must!) so that ended up being used in the beginning of the song. (the Auto-Wah also played a major role in the song "Natural").
EVERYTHING YOU DO (comes back to you) - The song "Everything you do (comes back to you)" was also written in Thailand. I was strolling down the beach in Kamala when I heard the song "Running Away" by Bob Marley & the Wailers being played at a beach restaurant. Inspired by this I immediately ran back to our bungalow and wrote the song. The song is also a reaction to a betrayal by someone I really trusted that happened at the time. I really do believe in some sort of Karma - otherwise people would get away with murder all over the world every day and that just doesn't make sense to me. You can run, you can hide but at the end the bad (or good) things you have done will catch up with you. I firmly believe this. When I told Bamma the details of this betrayal he wrote his toast on the fly in the studio. Anyway the track features some great hihat-playing by Steve Nilsson and truly fantastic organplaying by Sven. Frank came up with the haunting synth-line that colours the choruses; sometimes small things really make a big difference! The backing vocal arrangement at the end was conceived by Charlotte and myself and recorded in our closet here at home. (not so glamorous, huh?) I worked hard at making this track ambient and sort of lucious in the sound - I'll leave it up to you to determine whether I suceeded or not.
ON AND ON - As with "High Society", "On and on" started with the bassline. I had written 9 - 10 songs for the album and decided what the album needed was one more uptempo song. So I came up with the bassline and wrote the song from that. Petter played the drums on this one, I decided the beat I wanted for the song was more up his alley than Steve's. I tried to make the production of the song very snappy, distinct and percussive.
HOLD YOUR PAEACE - The drums for "Hold your peace" was a left-over take from the recording sessions for our second album, "Who is the Enemy?" I just love the way this song sticks out; it is very different from anything we've done before. Acutally I was inspired by the song "Don't give in" by Steel Pulse when I wrote it. I'm also very pleased with the lyrics; I really, really am sick of all these gansta rappers yapping on and on about their bitches, their rocks, guns and drugs. I believe it is poisoning the minds of young people all over the world and that nothing good can come of it. Extra cred to Steve on this one, the hihat pattern is a defining musical building block of this song. Mikael played the really nice guitarsolo at the end of the song.
REGGAE FEVER - We were doing a show at a wedding in the north of Sweden and we decided we had to rehearse some covers as not all of our songs would be suited for such an occasion. One of the covers was "Reggae Fever", the Steel Pulse song. We all loved playing it and since over 25 years had passed since the song was originally released we decided we should put it on the album. By this time Steve was no longer a member of the Tribe. So who would play the drums? We ended up asking Janne Karlsson, drummer of legendary Swedish reggaeband Kalle Baah to do it. Kalle Baah had helped us a lot by signing us to their own label, thus giving us distribution in Sweden through the major distributor Bonnier Amigo. Janne recorded the drums in the Kalle Baah studio in Skärblacka which is a 4 hour drive south of Stockholm. (once again the internet did the trick) Although the song is perfect in its original version we decided we had to leave our mark on it. We ended up adding 2 toasts by Bamma and a drum and bass part to the song. After getting the green light from Selwyn Brown of Steel Pulse the song was added to the album.
NEVER ENOUGH - The song "Never Enough" also came to me while I was out on a walk. The mantra-like repetitious chours kept going round and round in my head and I surrendered to it. The sort of odd harmonies in the verses came later. I love the way the verses are filled with tension harmonically, a tension that is released by the pre-chorus. The lyrics took a long time to write, I added lines every now and then during the course of a year. This one sticks out, I think, all the way from the sort of 70s "Baretta"-feel of the intro to the bombastic bingidrum ending. Frank came up with the fantastic synthlines in the choruses using the Atmosphere plugin in my computer. Magic stuff.
PEACE OF MIND - "Peace of Mind" came out with a sort of polished, West-coast sound which surprised me since I thought it was going to be a bluesy song. Just goes to show how songs do have a mind and life of their own sometimes. Frank plays a mean organ in this one - ain't it just great how Frank and Sven compliment eachother? Sven is a tremendous "bubbly" organ and piano-player and Frank is really good at the stuff that is a little extra. Great combo anyway. Mikael's guitarparts also added a lot to the sound of this song, I think. "Peace of Mind" also came during one of my walks - good thing I get off my can and get out of the house as often as I do.
NOTHINGNESS - "Nothingness" is based on another one of Anders´riddims. We recorded the drums and bass along with the very distinct percussionpattern before the words and melody were written. When I told Anders it was going to be a dark song about how short our lives are and how, relatively speaking, insignificant our lives are he was sort of surprised. I turns out his version was in a major key (I think the chords were A and Bm). My version, on the other hand was in a minor key - F#m / Bm - which totally changed the feel of the riddim (I think it took Anders a while to get used to it) Anyway, I totally love the mantra-like monotonous feel of the song, it's acutally one of my favourites on the album. I wrote the lyrics in the summer of 2007 when I was going through some sort of crisis. The prospect of my own inevitable demise loomed over me and life seemed more or less filled with trivial, meaningless things. Midlife crisis maybe, I don't know. Anders and I did the dubbing (as we did on the whole album). We had collaborated with our good friend Internal Dread, international master of dub, on our two first albums but now we wanted to change our sound and rely totally on the talents and abilities within the band. The guitar solo at the end is a one-take; most of the times that's the way it turns out the best for me.
HOLDING THE DEVIL'S HAND - "Holding the Devil's Hand" was also written in Thailand. It might seem that a song like that would be malplaced on a sunny beach but you never know when ideas will hit you. The whole song started with the sort of rock guitar parts in the chorus and intro + the bassline. Militant! I am very pleased with the lyrics which were written with great care. I think they speak for themselves, no comments are required. I thought long and hard about whether or not it was a good idea to use the sampling of Hitler in the beginning. It's not something I would do lightly, I wouldn't want to use it as a cheap trick for shock value. But it fit the theme of the song perfectly so, after consulting some various people to aske their opinion , I decided to use it. The other samples are eye-account witnesses from the Columbine Highschool massacre and 9/11. The last sample is an excerpt from a speech at a meeting of Iraq Veterans against Bush. The story he tells is of how he after ordering rockets to be fired into a house stormed the house to find a whole family of women and children dead. The only one alive was the grandmother. He broke down in tears and was consoled by the grandmother who said it was God's will. This is what he is referring to when he says that it "wasn't God's will. It was my fucking order". I have to praise Martin and Tobbe again for the fantastic hornplaying towards the end of this song, a fitting end to the album for sure.