Music First

First Aid Kit

First Aid Kit were one of the biggest breakout bands of 2012. With the release of their second LP, The Lion's Roar, in January, the Swedish sister-act have spent the year playing the big-ticket summer festivals and late-night talkshow slots that come with upward indie mobility, while their album has cracked the Top 40 in Australia and the UK, the Top 75 in the USA, and, in Sweden, hit #1.

“We're still at the stage where we're shocked and happy, wherever we go, to see so many people at our shows,” says Klara Söderberg, the 19-year-old younger half – and guitarist/vocalist – of the group. “When fans support us in any way, it's amazing; it kinda blows our mind a little bit that anyone at all would want to come and see us.”

So much of that undeniable “positive response” has been, Söderberg thinks, from people who see them as embodying noble notions of the folk music tradition; the acoustic songs and sweet sibling harmonies (which Klara shares with 22-year-old vocalist/keyboardist Johanna). Yet, Söderberg isn't necessarily sure she agrees with the assessment. “You can never say that about yourself, that you're part of a tradition,” she considers. “And as much as we're interested in folk music, we're not interesting in trying to keep with tradition, or being part of a tradition. We're just trying to make the best music we can make, right now; music that represents how we're feeling, and what we're capable of doing at this point in time, the most honest way we can. We only ever write songs that mean something to us, that are about things that are interesting to us. We're not trying to write songs for other people. But, at the same time, it's up to other people to tell us what those songs are worth; and to tell us whether they see us fitting in to this folk music tradition, and whether they like us or not.”

Though Söderberg sees First Aid Kit's folkie music as being authored to please its songwriters, she also knows that it's not just for themselves. “If I really think about what we want, it's that connection with other people,” she says, after some prodding. “I know I said we're surprised that anyone else cares about what we're doing, but you really do hope, deep down, that that is what's going to happen. That other people will hear [your music], will connect with it, that it will mean something to them. That it will make them feel less lonely. That's the big hope.”

First Aid Kit forged that connection, at first, a veritable viral video stars; their live-in-the-woods cover of Fleet Foxes' Tiger Mountain Peasant Song earning thousands upon thousands of views before they'd ever officially released anything. Eventually, the sisters signed with The Knife's Rabid Records imprint in Sweden, and Wichita worldwide; releasing their first EP, 2008's Drunken Trees, and their debut album, 2010's The Big Black & The Blue, when they were both still teenagers. “It is really special that we have this really clear document of our early songwriting,” says Klara. “Y'know, the first EP we wrote when I was 14. To have that, and be able to listen to it, now, is pretty special.”

While their age brought with it a novelty, it was as much a burden as a liberation; First Aid Kit constantly condescended to, in their early days, by a music-industry establishment still functioning as a patriarchy. “There were definitely people who told us that we were too young to be doing what we were doing,” Söderberg recounts. “Of course, we were 14 and 16, so I totally understand that this was unusual, and that at the very least a lot of people found it strange. But it was definitely a battle to be young girls in a business dominated by old men. Everywhere we'd go to play shows, there were always men working behind the scenes, and you could definitely feel sometimes that they thought we didn't know what we were doing. It was really condescending, and really annoying.

“That's definitely changed, now. We don't really see that a lot. We don't really get asked about it anymore by journalists, which is so nice. It's really hard to come up with something interesting to say when people just say 'you're really young', and don't actually really have a question to ask. Now we can feel that people aren't focused on how young we are, and that we're women, and that means that we can just focus on doing what we want to do, and talking about our music, not our age, and our gender.”

Musically and emotionally speaking, The Lion's Roar marks the maturation of the due. Forced, by their youth, to be storytellers on The Big Black & The Blue (“we were so young we didn't have a life to write about”), the follow-up record is both more personal and more universal; the sisters writing about themselves, and the hook-laden songs being recorded by Bright Eyes associate and Monsters Of Folk member Mike Mogis in big, bright tone.

“It wasn't a difficult-second-album feeling at all,” Söderberg says, of the recordings. “We weren't dreading trying to follow up our first one, it was the opposite. We weren't entirely happy with [The Big Black & The Blue], from the moment we left the studio we felt we had a better album to make. And that really inspired us. When you're working on something new, you should really be hoping to make something better, not just trying to make something maybe just as good.”

Now, First Aid Kit are about to turn to making their next album; which the band hope to have finished by the end of 2013. “We're constantly thinking about it, but we don't actually know what it is yet,” says Söderberg. “As soon as you finish one record you start thinking about the next one, but early on its mostly just daydreams. We haven't even really talked much about it together. It's possible that the way Johanna feels about it is different to the way I feel about it. I don't know, we've still got a long time to work it out. We try to write the songs first, then see how these ideas might start to take form once we've got a few songs. Then it becomes clear where you're going. At the moment, we're still just feeling things out, we're certainly not discussing the themes of the record just yet.”

Before they set out making their new record, First Aid Kit will be returning to Australia for their third tour here. “I remember the first time we played in Australia, we played two sold-out shows in Melbourne, and that felt really wonderful,” Söderberg recollects. “To be able to travel to the other side of the planet and receive such a warm welcome, when we didn't even know if people would really know us there, was amazing. We've loved coming to Australia each time, and I'm excited again this time. I'm going to spend my 20th birthday in Perth. Last time we were in Perth, we went to a koala sanctuary, and I kinda fell in love with the kangaroos. Hopefully I get to hang out with them again for my birthday.”

First Aid Kit will be playing the following dates:

Friday 28 December - Tuesday 1 January - Falls Festival, Lorne VIC
Saturday 29 December - Tuesday 1 January - Falls Festival, Marion Bay TAS
Wednesday 2 January - The Forum Theatre, Melbourne VIC
Friday 4 January - Saturday 5 January - Southbound Festival, Sir Stewart Bovell Park, Busselton WA