The Brag

Two Swedes, One American, All Good
By Jonno Seidler

Like a cool comet from a distant galaxy, Miike Snow came from nowhere and hit pretty much everywhere in 2009. Rather unfairly tagged as ‘The Next Big Thing’, the band – consisting of American multi-instrumentalist Andrew Wyatt and two Swedish men with mega-hard-to-pronounce names – had actually been huge forces in the music industry for over a decade. “I wrote a bunch of songs [recently] for Daniel Merriweather,” Wyatt says offhand, while walking through a shopping mall in downtown L.A. “We had this mutual friend, Mark Ronson…”

Wyatt has lots of friends like this; as a producer, bass player, vocalist and all-round work-a-holic, he’s been in bands with Greg Kurstin (Lily Allen and Ke$ha’s key producer/songwriter) and remnants of Jeff Buckley’s studio outfit. Miike Snow (which Wyatt definitively confirms is actually pronounced ‘Mike’) are not a flash in the pan. Rather, they represent a long history of solid pop writing, now manifest in a run of hit singles including ‘Animal’, ‘Burial’ and ‘Silvia’.

The band write songs in steps and, as Wyatt tells me, the the tracks that made it onto their self-titled debut record “are the ones that actually got past step one.” That’s a goal in itself, especially for Wyatt, who concedes that the band “never really thought of this album as being our ‘main thing.’” For a record that sounds surprisingly confident and developed, its members were, apparently, quite the opposite. “We weren’t working with too much time on our hands. We were doing it without much expectation about what would happen with it. We really didn’t think we’d be touring and stuff!” Miike Snow are about to head to Australia for the first time, to play Splendour in the Grass – their side-project dalliance is apparently becoming more of a ‘main thing’ than they’d imagined.

Unlike his Swedish Miike Snow bros (more on them later), it seems that fame and fortune has never really been a part of Wyatt’s dedication to music. “I don’t want to be on the cover of Success magazine,” he tells me. “You know, there’s no way to argue with that! You see it on a newsstand and say ‘Wow, that dude is Successful!” Take the band’s lead single, ‘Animal’: “I can’t say I wrote it expecting to become an anthem,” Wyatt laughs, “but it definitely had that kind of a vibe to it. It’s like…European, tribal music!” Wyatt’s big dream is to have ‘Animal’ turn into a pagan chant; “The kind of thing people scream out at soccer games. You know, like they do with that White Stripes song now. Do, do do-do-do duhhh, duhhh.”

For about two minutes here, Wyatt drops off the line and argues with about three different people. “I’m sorry, they’re trying to find my car,” he apologises, “This is a Los Angeles conundrum. You don’t have this in Australia, do you?” While he’s searching, let’s take a look at the other two members of Miike Snow; Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg. These Swedes are super-producers, and trading as Bloodshy & Avant they’re pretty much the hottest pop writers on the planet. They wrote Britney Spears’ chart-slaying ‘Toxic’. They made Rob Thomas a solo star with ‘This Is How A Heart Breaks’. So if you find it impossible to get Miike Snow’s tunes out of your head, there’s a damn good reason why. These guys specialise in earworms.

Wyatt now spends a lot more of his time in Sweden, not just for the band but also to be with his Swedish girlfriend; a coincidental pairing, as the two actually met in New York. But since their rapid ascension as a musical force on the charts (and blogs), Miike Snow have spent most of their days on the road. They’re still releasing, too – they recently cut a new track with DJ to the stars, Stuart Price. They debuted ‘The Rabbit’ last week. “It’s on the new version of our album. The deluxe version. It was actually one of the first songs we wrote, but then Stuart took it and did his thing… The powers that be heard it, and thought it would be a Really Big Radio Song.”

Miike Snow and these powers that be have had a pretty interesting relationship. They’re one of the most popular bands on RCRDLBL – an alternative, legitimate source of online music for fans, which often includes free downloads. “It’s really pointless to try and stop people getting your music for free,” Wyatt says, “But by the same token, you should really give people new ways that they can buy your music. We’re a band who’s done a lot of touring, and our record appears to be well-known despite not selling many units at alll!” Miike Snow has no problem consolidating their online influence, in any case. The band’s remixes of acts like Passion Pit and Vampire Weekend ensures they’ll be on high rotation for a long while yet, even if it’s not in CD form. And as their popularity continues to soar, hopefully Wyatt will find a way to keep track of his car. “Man,” he laughs, signing off, “I really should have stayed in Sweden.”

Who: Miike Snow
What: Miike Snow is out now
When: Wednesday August 4
Where: The Forum
More: Splendour In The Grass 2010