How Johan Duncanson made peace with The Radio Dept's Pet Grief

Back when Johan Duncanson and his bandmate Martin Carlberg started rehearsing the songs from The Radio Dept.'s Pet Grief, they were worried it was too quiet. When it finally arrived in 2006 – after the acclaim that had followed debut Lesser Matters – some of the reviews were hard to take. “I remember Martin saying to me, ‘But this is really your album, Johan,’” Duncanson tells me. “It felt like an accusation.”For a week or two, he obsessed over it then found a way to fire the same accusation back. “I can't remember by what logic or anything, but it felt real,” he says. “We just accused each other of being responsible for the record. But of course it was a collaboration.” Sign up to Best Fit's Substack for regular dispatches from the world of pop culture Twenty years later, it would be difficult to find either of them guilty of much. Songs that spent years sitting quietly in the band's catalogue are suddenly reaching a new audience. “Sleeping In” has overtaken “Heaven's on Fire” among their most-streamed tracks, and Duncanson says that when he looks at the band's most listened-to songs now, they are dominated by Pet Grief.“I never really realised that was happening until very recent...