We’ve gotten to know Girl Scout fairly well over the past few years between their series of EPs and touring spots opening for groups like Alvvays—it’s hard to believe, then, that Brink marks the Swedish indie rockers’ debut album. On the one hand it’s everything we’ve come to appreciate about the band; yet beyond honing their balance between their North American indie-rock peers such as their aforementioned tourmates and the dreamy power-pop of fellow Swedes like Makthaverskan (“Crumbs,” for example, sees the band make a conscious effort to sound “a bit Swedish”), these 13 songs also reflect the jadedness that comes with being veteran musicians. To cite “Crumbs” again, the band shares that they had “douchebags at record labels” in their crosshairs while penning that single.
Yet Brink is an overwhelmingly pleasant listen. Lyrically these songs pay homage to young love and to their peers (and to each other), while musically they feature a new-wave bounce to their guitar-centric compositions with Emma Jansson’s vocals soaring atop it all. Despite enlisting indie-grunge architect Alex Ferrar as the album’s producer, the harsh notes that punctuate the instrumental intro track are largely absent later in the album as the band sinks into a comfortable groove of glowing indie-pop. To hear Jansson put it, many of these songs were initially far outside of their comfort zone—too folky, too theatrical—before bringing them into the rehearsal space where they ultimately fit together like puzzle pieces into a cohesive whole.
With the self-released record out today (you heard what they said about record label douchebags), read through Jansson’s track-by-track breakdown of the LP and stream along below. You can order Brink here, and if you’re in the UK/Europe you can catch the band on their spring tour at the dates listed here.
1. “Intro”
We knew we were gonna have an intro on the record since way before we started making it. I really like when an album has an intro because you get some space to get into the right mood. We wanted something that felt looser than your average GS song. We ended up just recording whatever felt right, and I think it turned out pretty cool and fragile.
2. “Song 1”
It was originally written on piano, but something didn’t feel quite right with it. The arrangement made it sound like a musical number or something, very theatrical. One day when we were goofing around in our rehearsal room with a synth sequence I tried singing the melody over that instead. That’s kind when it fell into place and we built the rest of the arrangement around that.
3. “Same Kids”
An homage to our friends and to the band.
4. “Dead Dog”
One of the last songs to make it onto Brink. When I wrote it it was kind of folky, and then it took a few different forms before we knew what to do with it. Kind of a headache to make, if I’m being honest? But I like how it turned out.
5. “Keeper”
I don’t think anything we’ve recorded sounds like this one. It’s very dark and serious in a way we haven’t really explored before. We had a bass line, drums, some lyrics, and it became clear that those were the key elements. We wanted to surround the song with a haunting atmosphere, so we had a day in the studio where we ran around and sampled a bunch of synths and weird sounds. It was such an intuitive creative process.
6. “Uh-Huh”
Young love! What a trip. It’s very ’00s-high-school—the guitar riff drives the whole song.
7. “Operator”
Such a dumb song! But you can dance to it!
8. “Simple Life”
I wrote this in the middle of a crisis as a little mantra to myself. Maybe life can be simple if you choose to ignore the difficult parts and pretend you’re a little dumb. Did it work? Kind of. Wrote it in an hour, brought it to the band, and then we did a couple takes in the studio—no rehearsal and no embellishments. We felt like that approach fit the sentiment of the song.
9. “Ugly Things”
The softest, most acoustic-leaning song on the record.
10. “The Kill”
I could not for the life of me tell you what is going on in this song on a musical level. I wrote it on a guitar with a weird mystery tuning and was just playing odd chords at random. Our friend Kalle Johansson played the crazy synth solo on the outro, which is probably the best part of the whole song.
11. “Crumbs”
We’ve been told we don’t sound very Swedish, even though we’re all from there. I feel like this one sounds a bit Swedish? I’m not sure what that means exactly, but I swear there’s something to it. It’s about douchebags at record labels and how boring it is to have drinks with them.
12. “Homecoming”
This is a song we knew we wanted on the album since we made it. It’s kind of its own thing; it’s not really similar to anything we’ve written before or since. Very dramatic.
13. “Outro”
This is kind of the comedown portion of the record. I love how it ends up in the beginning of the intro.
