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Liberator
Does the Sweden’s finest Ska band leave ska music?
A 360° talk between Sergio “Da Prophet" Rallo and Liberator.
The city: Milano, the place: the Rolling Stone venue.
I had the chance to meet Liberator during their last tour, promoting their latest album, Too Much Of Everything. We meet in the dressing room, while someone is prepearing the stage for the sound check.
Besides their excellent cd’s I still remember their great show they had at the Tunnel, in Milano, almost an year and a half ago to promote their past cd, World Wide Delivery. Me and Alessandro did an interview with them as well.
Robert, the singer, seems to remember, as he recognizes me. Along with Robert, two more guys from the band: it’s Andreas, the sax player, and the new keys player who also speaks Italian.
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So, Robert, first of all, I see the line up is quite changed…. What happened?
Well, our drummer (Johan Holmberg) left the band due to personal reasons, and the former key player (Erik Wesser) left to continue his studies at university.
Too bad, no more music for him….
No, not at the moment. Not in this life, tho I suppose he’ll keep on living with music in some way.
Good. Talking about your new album’s music (Too Much Of Everything, Burning Heart Records), and talking about the review I made on it, I got to tell you that I found that album a lot different from the last one. “World Wide Delivery" was definitely a 360° ska album. There was reggae, ska, dub, rocksteady and a little bit of ragga, while...
...while there’s not much of that in this one.
Well, to be honest, I’ve always considered you, since the “This is Liberator" times, one of the most interesting European bands because of your distinguish sound. But this time I think that “Too much of everything" has a strongest rock n’roll and punk influence more than ska or reggae…
Let me explain. It’s a matter of opportunities of choices. We had the possibility to record a lot more songs that the ones that were put on the album, and choosing between them, we just happened to put on the album those that were the less ska just because we liked ‘em more. We might even do an e.p. with the excluded tracks. Definitely I agree with you: Too Much Of Everything is not a ska album.
So I think I’m right if I tell you that Liberator is looking for a new kind of audience...
Yes, that’s right.
So don’t you think that it could be dangerous to leave one mainstreet when your traditional audience expects you to play ska?
(New Key Player): Yesterday, in Torino (first date of a short European tour in Italy, Yugoslavia and Germany), the support band was a ska band; the DJ was ska and there were skinheads as well. So the audience was surely expecting a ska show, but instead they heard this kind of strange mix….
Andreas: they were a bit confused….
Robert: ….at the beginning I saw the skins with their arms folded, but then I saw them dancing to the rhythm as well. Wherever you go, it’s always different. It seems to me that here in Italy they want more ska than in our country. In Sweden it could be that people won’t go to a ska show because there’s Liberator playing somewhere else. The truth is that we’re not really looking for a new audience or a different audience, we like our audience. We’re just trying to make a different music.
But I’m a bit of a precise and malicious guy and I thought that your changes where a bit influenced by the fact that you’re recording for a label which is more punk oriented, so you’ve been trying to reach that kind of audience. Tho I must say that your style has never been really “soft".
The exact word is: punky-ska.
I personally think that Too Much of Everything is a good album, tho I must say that I asked myself if there was a real need to review it for SkabadiP, since there just for songs that have a ska influence.
I believe that for a typical ska audience, the new record could be hardly understood, but there’s also a track with traditional rhythms like “Once you start (you can’t stop)".
Yes, that’s true, tho it’s still in your own Liberator style.
Yeah!!!
Yeah, ok, but in this new album there’s also a “Rocker’s revolution" which is one of the most hard and violent tracks in the album…. And to tell you the truth, I’d much rather a “ska revolution". But don’t tell the guys in Liberator...
(they all laugh) You see , there’s a bit of difference between the sound that came out in the final production, on the album, and our own typical live sound. Even when we play hard stuff, our sound is still a traditional sound but it could also happen that some kind of melody we like does not fit in a traditional ska style so we might get something from different experiences.
Actually, if I have to think of what we’ve done so far, I think we never played a ska-beat or a reggae-beat; it’s more something like a swing-beat, that works also with different rhythms and that makes people dance.
(Key Player): this album’s sound is very different from the other records we did; but we’ve done it because we believe that people will react just as positively as we had fun doing this album. I can say this because I had to listen to all the Liberator stuff to get prepared for this tour.
So what’s your favourite album then?
(Key Player): it’s hard to say because every album has it’s own qualities, but I guess that my fave is World wide delivery; I also have to say that since I’ve joined the band, Liberator have become amazingly better!!!
(everybody laughs…)
(Robert): another importan point is that we took about an year of hard work to release “Too Much Of Everything". No live show, just 15 days in summer and then only studio work. We worked on this album more than we did for all the others together.
Sure I believe that’s the reason why you can really feel that there’s a great job and a great production behind the album.
Thank you, we’re really happy with Too Much Of Everything.
Seem to me that also the lyrics have quite changed. Am I wrong?
(the guys now look very intereste in what I’m talking about, and after saying “A-Ha", they let me explain my views….
It seemed to me that World Wide Delivery was more oriented on the sentimental aspects of live, like the relationship with your woman or your lover. In Too Much Of Everything it seems more into the social aspects of life, criticizing the way some people behave, live and do politics. (they look enthusiastic that I paid attention to the lyrics).
People generally don’t really care about the lyrics…
Did you really listen to lyrics??
Sure I did! Sometimes I even sing along with Robert when he’s on the stereo!
(we all laugh)
Yes, I have to say that also the lyrics deal with different topics from the other albums, but the fact is that Too Much Of Everything is a special work to us…..it’s like if we’ve put in everything Liberator is about, our experiences, impressions, all in one album. You see why it’s called Too Much Of Everything?? (laughs)
I personally liked the melancholy “21st anniversary". Where did you get the inspiration to that song?
I guess it’s a sensation that you often feel in some old couples: they’ve got nothing else to say to each other, but they’re together since too long. Once it wasn’t that easy to separate and then divorce, there was a different mentality, so, after 20 years living together it was clear that they weren’t happy together but they don’t have the courage to quit.
I really liked also “Better Days" where there seems to me there’s a Madness piano riff….
Very good, you got it!!
We weren’t really happy that we had copied that Madness piano riff, but it was something that came out all by its own, playing that song, so we thought that it would fit and we let it there. But you know what? Do tyou remember that Madness’ song title?
(huge embarassment by the Prophe who admits) No, actually I can’t remember...
It’s “One better day"
Yeah, that’s true….. from the “keep on moving" album of 1984.
(Robert starts singing that song) It’s one of the best songs of that album…
In “Louder Than Words" you say that actions have more powerful impact that words….what kind of actions?
You see Sergio, I’s easy to talk and it’s easy to play rock ‘n roll but it’s so difficult to do something to change things. You might criticize people for what they do, but then, maybe, we’re doing worse. We criticize that kind of people even though we know how easy it is to talk and hard to really do something. Politicians are on top of that.
Song n°10, “Get yourself together", is a typical example of the variety of different musical styles you did get inspiration in this album: in its rhythm structure it’s really soul/R&B!
Yeah, it’s quite much like that. It’s the last song we recorde and our feeling were pretty different….. in that song even our producer did put something in. He’s a guitar player and played the rhythm guitar in that track. We really liked the result.
In the single cd called “Everybody wants it all" there’s something more similar to ska/reggae rhythms. “It hurts so good" and “Heatwave" are due cool reggae rocksteady tunes. So, what are your intentions then?
We recorded those songs during the “world wide delivery" sessions. We got a single out of that album, “Christine", but we didn’t include those two songs. We thought we liked to put them out now. They’re kinda live songs, with three keyboards. We only added the brass section later. Well, it was fun. We had those two songs and wanted to put them out in some way.
So I guess we con hope for some new single with some ska tracks out of this album’s sessions soon?
Sure. As I told you, we did more songs than the ones we put on the record, and we might put some of them out sooner or later.
That’s what we did with “World wide delivery" as well…
We took a lot more time to record this album than our first one (“This is Liberator", 1996). We did that CD in 4 days, we took two weekends and didn’t really have a big budget. We spent the rest of our time playing live.
Liberator change something in every recording they’ve done. We always change something because when you listen to what you’ve done, you’ll think of how you’d like it to sound next time: things you’ll add, things you’ll cut and so on. It’s like we’re always searching for a perfect sound, from time to time, a more “live" sound, just like in “this is liberator" or maybe a harder sound like in “Carefully Blended" (mini cd 1997).
This new album is like it’s a new “This is Liberator". Totally new stuff, without looking back.
I have to say that your lyrics, besides being generally serious or cynically ironic are…
...depressing! (we laugh)
I would say: not happy at all...
I guess it’s interesting to play such a music with a dance sound and such lyrics…. Depression has always been in the middle of dance halls! Remember the Pet Shop Boys? They had such depressing lyrics, but still, everybody danced at their songs.
And what about you video, that I still hadn’t the chance to see….. did it come out the way you expected?
It’s really funny! We had a lot of fun doing it. It’s on TMC 2.
I’m lucky! I can’t get that channel…..no MTV? You know, a couple of years ago with Hepcat going on MTV I thought: “WOW! Traditional ska climbing the charts in the pop world….
(everybody laughs)
How could it be that ska is not in the charts like in the two tone era? How comes there isn’t a single ska band that sells records?
When ska was born in Jamaica, in the sixties, it was nothing that pop music. It was mainly live pop music. They were nothing but pop songs, and some of them reached the charts in the UK, like “My boy Lollypop" by Millie. I think the whole thing got sick, with all those American labels releasing tons of records…. I happened to listen to great bands, but some were awful. In Germany we played with such a crappy band that Peter, our trombone player, was embarrassed when it was time to go on stage and play ‘cos he didn’t want his music to be compared with that crap.
So, Liberator, what do you expect from this album?
First of all, what do I expect from this tour: we play in the places where we already had exposure and had fans, so to get stronger fans for the future. You know, it’s so hard to do like many American bands that are continuously on tour. They can’t stop. They have to get money to live and have no time to stop in the studio. This could bring those bands to a lower quality music.
If you say that, I think of New York Ska Jazz En or Toasters who frequently come over to Italy.
I guess they’re having fun, but it’s such a hard work.
Ah, I almost forgot to say that I really loved “Cut Back (Will Hit Back)". A great soul/reggae song…
Well, then you’ll love the live version….it’s perfect for you!
Why?
‘cos it will shake you in the middle of the dancehall: on the album, there’s two acoustic guitars on that track, but here we have just one electric guitar. You’ll hear a different version from the album.
I think we can say that the live one is the SkabadiP version of “Cut Back"!
Well, thanks then, I’ll tell Alessandro who is going to be proud to have his own SkabadiP version of “Cut Back".
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Web Site: www.liberator.se
21 September 2000
by Sergio Rallo - translation by Antonio Crovetti - photos by Marco Carloni
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