The Road Home

I'd never make a good music journalist,” admits Klara Söderberg, the 21-year-old songwriter in Swedish sister act First Aid Kit. “I can never figure out why exactly I like something, why music makes me feel something, I just want to have that feeling.”

With the release of First Aid Kit's fourth record (and third LP proper) Stay Gold, Söderberg is trying to find the words to explain it all.

The way it sounds is big: producer Mike Mogis (of Bright Eyes and Monsters Of Folk) charged with wrangling a 13-piece orchestra, the Söderberg sisters inspired by an obsession with Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. “We loved that old-fashioned grandeur, its drama, those big strings and that big sound,” Klara says. “We wanted bigger arrangements to really get those feelings through. We thought we would try it. We just wanted the songs to be more dramatic, to sound...” Klara pauses. “Big and old. It's hard to explain, obviously.”

Söderberg confesses she's struggling, but the fact that First Aid Kit are on the road in Phoenix, Arizona on a sprawling tour that'll bring them back to Australia isn't part of her struggles. This is, after all, the family business: Klara joined by her elder sister, Johanna, with their father, Benkt, doing their live sound. “There's something that feels natural about travelling with your group of people; like you're nomads. By this point, what feels strange as being on home.”

Following extensive touring for their breakout 2012 album, The Lion's Roar, First Aid Kit returned to Stockholm and tried to “create a life again”. For Klara, who started touring at 15, it meant creating a new life. She moved out of her parents' house (“that was exciting”) and tried to get used to the stillness of a one-city life.

“I just felt so restless. When you're on tour, you have a schedule. You know where you're going, what's going to happen, the place you're going to go next. You have a real purpose to every day: it's going to end with a show, and everything you do leads up to that show. Then, when you come home, you don't have a schedule, and you don't always have a purpose. When you're so used to living your life like that, being presented with the opportunity to do whatever you want, whenever you want, it can actually be scary.”

Wait, scary? “Yeah, it was scary!” Söderberg replies. “You don't have to really think when you're on tour. You're always busy, there's always something going on, there's always people around. And then you come home, and there's not. All you have is yourself, but you have to get to know who that actually is. You have all this time to think. It's what we ended up writing about on [Stay Gold]: getting to know ourselves. And realising that you've grown up, that you're so much older. Those can be scary things to think about; it's a scary world out there.”

Beyond the idea that their band essentially chronicles their lives, there was no specific thought given, by the Söderberg siblings, to the idea that Stay Gold was going to be a place to address these feelings – to grapple with the slippery sense of 'home', the existential angst of peering deep within, the fleeting nature of things. This is because Söderberg, in her mind, has no idea what her songs are about, and only has to think about them when in interviews.

“I never think anything good comes out of thinking too hard about something you're doing. Neil Young said something about writing songs that went like, 'As soon as I start thinking about what I'm doing, then I have to stop.' That's the way I feel too. Once you start thinking beyond the song – wondering what it's about, where it fits in with what you're doing, whether it's good enough for a record – then that inspiration, or whatever you want to call it, can just vanish. You have to just inhabit that process of songwriting, and enjoy that process. And if you do, if you have fun, then it's probably a good song.”

Fun? Is Söderberg, as songwriter, never wracked or tortured by the artistic process? “No, it's a fun process, and it's healthy, too. I think writing a song is a good thing for someone to do. It's like therapy, a way to deal with what you're going through... to try to understand yourself. Sometimes it's this real feeling of 'Hey, does anyone else feel the same way I do?' Like, it comes from a moment of confusion. And then, if you're lucky enough, that song ends up on an album, and then someone else hears it, and they understand exactly how you feel, and it's this real moment of connection. And that's really powerful.”