Girl Scout and the power of patience

It’s a concept that surfaces as a band matures and develops. Most groups enter an era of experimentation at some stage; this can often result in some of their most exciting music. “We’re very clear on what we like musically… I probably can’t tell you what that is, but I feel like when we’re working on a song, in the end we’re always in agreement,” says Girl Scout’s Emma Jansson. “But then what it actually is, I don’t know if I could tell you.”

“Maybe the Swedish band that doesn’t sound Swedish,” suggests guitarist Kevin Hamring.

“I didn’t listen to Abba – my parents don’t listen to Abba,” continues Jansson, picking up the thread. “I like them, I just don’t have nostalgia for them.”

“95% of Swedish kids get ABBA shoved down their throats,” agrees Hamring. It’s a relief that he is the first to mention this Swedish stereotype; that elephant has been duly identified and removed from the room.

“Swedish people unironically still love ABBA… but I had Pink Floyd, U2, Hall & Oates.… ” Jansson concludes.

This is a good example of the Girl Scout difference. Bringing disparate backgrounds and influences along with a shared experience of studying jazz, the band members came together to meld a truly exciting sound. True, there are familiar elements, such as consistently irresistible guitar riffs, distinct musicianship, and a strong DIY ethos which harks back to the early ’80s and ’90s indie rock trailblazers from both sides of the Atlantic. But that is combined with a sense of experimentation – a fluidity and distinct disdain for boundaries. Listen to a couple of their tracks and it is obvious that Girl Scout are a band formed through a genuine love of music.

“We bonded over wanting to play music,” says Jansson. “Back when you’re 13, 14 and music is your own little world you can go into… that was the thing we had in common that made this project so fun when we started it.”

She describes the “foundation pillars” of the band as “a lot of The Strokes, White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead… mostly American and British music.”

As they enter their album era with Brink, which follows a trilogy of introductory EPs, Girl Scout are in a reflective mood – and there’s a sense of wonder and discovery in how they speak about their new work. The album follows on from what was their first self-produced EP, Headache. Jansson explains that the experience of making that record – and seeing how well it was received – gave them the faith they needed to take an independent approach to a longer format.

“I think it was important for us to test our wings, to see how independently we could make something, to then really feel confident to do it on a full-length album,” says Jansson. “We found out that we can do it ourselves, and it will sound more like us if we do it ourselves.”

“It was a big realisation doing that EP and seeing it was really good,” adds Hamring.

Across 13 tracks, Brink attempts to encapsulate an intense swirl of emotions, the kind that comes from reaching one of those fundamental points in life where decisions must be made, where the unknown looms, and where nostalgia clashes with nervous excitement and trepidation for the future.

“I think the album is kind of an amalgamation of us as a group of friends and where we are in life. Going through an internal crisis and simultaneously being in a phase in our lives where we’ve been generally panicking a lot!” Jansson explains. “Partially because of the state of the world and there’s just so many scary things happening, and also where we are in life – getting older and feeling the weight of your life decisions kind of chase you a little bit.”

“It’s very much everything we’re all experiencing these past years put into an album,” she concludes.

The band admits that Brink is musically broader and more varied than their previous work. They have used the space afforded by the album format well, allowing the music time to breathe and making the most of the scope for experimentation.

“It darts between being really light-hearted and really dark from song to song, which is kind of how crashouts work,” says Jansson. “You say, ‘Oh it’s fine…’ and then you wake up one day like, ‘What have I done?!’”

She goes on to explain how working in the lengthier album format has taught the band to be more purposeful and more selective in their creative process.

“I think we’ve become a lot more patient with scrapping stuff and starting over, with backing up and really giving it a lot of time and thought, and putting in our best effort to make it as good as we can make it.”

That level of discipline is reflected across Brink, but it’s not a rigid or forced discipline. Instead, the album comes across as carefully moulded and well balanced – put together with clear editorial decision-making but always with an ear to creative expression. The album is bookended by the hazy, dramatic mystery of twin tracks “Intro” and “Outro”, each cleverly echoing the other. In between, we find an arc carefully drawn from the chirpy, rapid-fire wistfulness of “Song 1” through to the closing song, “Homecoming”, with its vocal-centred power and sense of arrival through the vastness of life.

Elsewhere, we find the band exploring the idea of friendship and shared ideals among the stop-start chords of “Same Kids”, entering a fragile zone of reflection in “Ugly Things”, or simply having fun with “Operator”.

Meanwhile, songs such as “Keeper” show a startlingly different side to the group. This is a track built around a solid beat which has been decorated with layer-upon-layer of swirling or chiming synths, and topped with passionate vocals. Drummer Per Lindberg explains how the band departed from its usual approach.

“We are usually a ‘band band’, in a sense: like, that’s the guitar part you play live, and this is the drum part,” Lindberg says. “And this turned out to be a different process… We can add piano, we can add synths, and a bunch of e-bowed guitars. It was really fun to experiment. I think making an album gave us that opportunity – or made it feasible to work in that way.”

Perhaps the core of this record is found in “Simple Life”, Jansson’s choice when asked to pick one standout.

“I feel like it encompasses the feeling of the album very well: there’s lightheartedness, but then behind the lightheartedness there’s a lot of despair,” she says.

Brink is a varied body of work, but one which holds true to the independent spirit of this band. Both triumphant and fragile, quirky and stoic, the record represents the pinnacle of years of hard work for Girl Scout. From here, they will inevitably continue to evolve, and as they do so, they will be holding fast to their honest core.