Michael Bastian talks to Lina and Maja Westin from Caviare Days
MB: I wanna start this conversation by telling everyone how we came up with this idea to have a special song for the season. It was way back, six months probably, when we were in the middle of designing the collection and really hadn’t formulated exactly the marketing or the whole vibe yet. It was just this idea of my time in Boston in the ’80s; there was a music angle, and there was a sport angle with the boxing, and there were a couple of characters mixed in there, my actual friends at the time. We were thinking a lot about what hook we were going to hang this idea on. How could we tie all this together? However, we were sitting in a meeting, designing men’s accessories, which Lina here was in charge of at that time. It was in the end of an afternoon and she came in and said: “I’m sorry if I’m a little bit distracted, but we had a late night last night, my guitar-string broke.” So of course, we all asked what she was talking about. And then she told us the whole story; how she and her sister had a band called Caviare Days, how they were getting to this certain point in their career, that they’d been invited to New York, had some songs and videos out, and a web site … and instead of designing men’s accessories we spent the whole time talking about this secret life she was leading.
LW: It’s so funny. I remember that day, it was a Friday afternoon and I had bruises all over my hand from the string busting. We’d had one of the worst gigs ever the night before, so I was sad and disappointed. But this bad experience turned into something very good, because if it had been a good gig, I probably wouldn’t have said anything.
MB: I listened to your music and really loved your sound. The more I listened, the more I thought there was something there that reminded me a lot of the mod revival that happened in the ’80s. Then you sent me a couple of links, and I sent you a playlist with some of my favorite songs. Me and the marketing team thought it would be cool if we could do a song that went with the season, a song that was also an update on this mod idea.
MW: But the timeline was so condensed. It all went very fast. We had to write a song in two weeks. And it was a very crazy period at work, plus we had a gig in Gothenburg….
MB: So that’s how it started. We had access to these really talented people who were about to break, who also understood what GANT and the collection is about. It’s like you one day discover that someone in your family has a secret talent.
MW: We started to record the song with base and drums as a foundation….at first, the song was going in one direction. It was all about tightening it up. How could we make it kind of…. deeper?
LW: More mellow.
MW: Now I’m happy that we changed direction. There’s always something wrong when you try and please somebody else; you have to put your own creative expression first. It has to be us, it has to feel like Caviare Days.
MB: Our only criterion was that we wanted it to be a song that would make people say “I wanna download it”, or “I wanna pay 99 cents on i-tunes to get this”. Then I’d know we had something because the song really stands on its own. That’s another beautiful thing about music. Great songs live much longer than a collection does, longer than anyone of us are going to be around. It’s a document…. But tell me, how did you get started? LW: We grew up in Gävle, a small city in Sweden, in a family where music was very important. Our dad was a professional musician and there were always music people around; students who took lessons or band members and others who collaborated with him. Our mother was also very much into music, mostly glam rock (laugh)…
MW: The great thing with our father was that he encouraged singing. Without him I would have never discovered what a great voice I have.
LW: I did my high school education in Gävle and I was always hanging out with the music students. At that time, the year of the millennium, there was kind of a mod thing going around. Very intellectual, in a way. I’m still very interested in that. I wanted to be in a band, but I couldn’t find any band members, so I went abroad.
MW: Just like me. I was in Asia, New York, Berlin and a few other places searching for something. I still don’t know what. But after being separated from Lina for 5 years, we went to New York together to write music. Our father who, as I said, is very talented in music, helped us to pick up our ideas before we left.
MB: I love that you are sisters. I do believe that siblings have an unspoken communication between them.
MW: The funny thing is, when we create something we usually fight a lot. We have very different ways of describing things, very different rhetorics, but in the end, the result will always be something that we both agree on.
LW: We can be honest with each other. Otherwise, If you’re in the creative business and you want your vision to come out, it’s easy to hurt people.
MB: So, how would you describe your music?
MW: Psychedelic pop, if you must put it in a genre. We want to illustrate a feeling. A literal and cinematic feeling.
LW: People are always comparing us to Jefferson Airplane … these days I can’t think of anyone who is doing the same thing that we are doing right now. Two girls fronting the band!
MB: How would you describe “mod”? Is it about music or style?
MW: It’s definitely more about style than music…
MB: This is what I always find interesting with mod. When it first came around, the controlled mod was a reaction against the wild rocker, the second revival was an answer to punk and who knows what the next revival will be, maybe a reaction to rap and street music? It’s always something about mods being just a little more controlled.
LW: It’s not that you try to be different, it’s more that you have another mindset. You are curious about certain kinds of books, movies and art.
MB: I think people who really define themselves as mods are not part of the mainstream group. They see themselves as a little bit smarter, a little bit cooler. The way they look, the music they listen to, the people they hang out with, even how they get around. How many musical movements for example have a kind of transport connected to them? It’s so funny how a lifestyle got built around this musical idea.
MW: And the style is so easy to define. You have the red, the blue, the white and the target symbol, the pop art and the graphics, the scooter, the army parka, the black suit with white shirt and the flat shoes…only the musical experience differs.
MB: I discovered this music when I went to school in Boston. I was a kind of an outsider and I came to this school and I got swept up in this through some friends of mine who were really into it, and I kind of found myself that way.
MW: The fact that we hang out with people living this ’60s garage thing made its mark on us. It kept us going back to the same thing. During those years around 2000 we were listening to The Hives and The Strokes, which you could call the mod sound for the 21st century.
MB: I’ve always said that mod begins and ends with The English Beats’ “Mirror in the Bathroom”. It’s hard to top. For me that crystallized everything. I listened to a lot of stuff at that time, bands like The Smiths, The Style Council, Echo & the Bunnymen and Pet Shop Boys, who weren’t hardcore mod. Here we are talking about “the era of the mixed tapes”. They were all fitting in with each other. I remember going to a record store were there was a big area for stadium rock bands like Guns ’n Roses and this little tiny mod section where all the cool people were hanging out. You could also buy British magazines there, like The Face and New Musical Express. For a little kid in Boston it was very cool to be a part of that world.
MW: What years are we talking about?
MB: 1983-87 were my Boston years.
LW: That’s when we were born!
MB: Oh man, thank you, thank you for that! How about the future for Caviare Days?
MW: We have never said Caviare Days should be just a band. It could be a brand, too. We could start a Caviare Days gallery tomorrow, for example. Everything is possible, but nothing too big.
MB: Most likely it will fly on its own. I think you should send your baby out in the world …you’ll have no idea of what the reaction will be.
MW: We want people to take time to listen to our music, then gradually realize that this is good stuff, it’s quality. It’s the same as I think about clothes. I look for quality, otherwise I’m not gonna wear it. I’m not searching for an instant trend that I will throw away after a few months.
MB: How would you describe success?
MW: I guess a day like this, when we got our first CD out….
MB: Ah, I didn’t know that. Congratulations!
MW: So today is really a defining moment. No matter what happens, we still have “the thing”, it’s here. It’s a dream we’ve had since we first learned what a CD was. Even though a CD is not as big a deal as it used to be, now that everything goes on Spotify, it feels like a personal success.
LW: Yeah that’s right. It’s something you can hold. For the moment, I’m so under stress, I can’t feel successful. But when I sit down later I’m gonna realize how happy I am. Doing something I love and I’ve believed in my whole life. Making a change both for myself and for other people. And when I’m older I can look back and say: “Ok, we only sold 500 records, but I tried, I managed it and I’m proud of it”: I think that is the most important thing in life.
MB: We certainly believe in you, guys.
MW, LW: Thank you!
