Welcome to the second Wrock Talk post, where we feature interviews with different wrock band every few weeks. Today, we will be traveling to the mythical land of the Vikings that many folks call Scandinavia, for it is here that a powerful, primordial magic stirs. What is this magic, you may ask? Why, it’s nothing other than pure, visceral rock music. What is more, this power is being channeled by a guild of magical musicians known as the Swedish Shortsnouts!

OK, OK, enough with the cheesiness. In truth, the Swedish Shortsnouts are one of Europe’s premiere wrock bands. And they rock. Founded way back in 2007 by Erik and Anna, this band has been serenading Sweden for a little over a decade. A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to chat with the band (which is now a trio, due to the addition of the band’s longtime musical pal Jimmy to their lineup). Read on for more…

Paul: Let’s dive right in, shall we? I love asking bands about their “origin story.” How did you form your band and start writing about Harry Potter of all things?

Anna: So back in 2007, I got really, really into wizard rock. If you’ve never imagined being 15 years old in Sweden with an iPod full of songs by bands that basically only play shows across the Atlantic, now’s your chance. There were a couple of Swedish wrock bands at the time, but they didn’t really play shows (yet) and the community here was mostly limited to online Potter message boards. Going home from school one day, I was thinking about wrock and what the best way to get the chance to actually experience a wrock show might be, and suddenly the solution was clear to me – if I started a wrock band, maybe wrock could grow in Sweden and more bands might form and get more active and then there’d be shows! That I could attend! It wasn’t as much about playing wrock shows, at that point in time, I wanted more to just be in the audience and how can there be an audience without active bands? So I came home that day and basically told my brother Erik, listen, we’re starting a wizard rock band. We’re starting it right now. We have to, it’s absolutely necessary, we’re doing this. And we did! That afternoon, we wrote our first song.

Erik: Wrote it, and recorded it! Did we upload it to MySpace the same day also? Probably.

Jimmy: At that point I was a year out from joining Solitary Snape in the summer of 2008. I first joined Anna and Erik on stage in 2009.

Paul: How would you describe your sound to someone who had never heard you before? What made you settle on that sound? Who would you all cite as your biggest musical influences?

Erik: It’s generally a guitar driven, kid friendly rock sound. But our influences come from many places. When it comes to the way we switch between acoustic and electric guitars and some general song writing, I think I was most influenced by Kyle Gass and Tenacious D. Guitar tones have always been influenced by Noodles in The Offspring (especially the lead tones). Harry and the Potters had a big influence on our live sound after we saw them perform in Sweden in 2010. This made us put more of the lead and solos in the keyboard for the second album, and even switch around the arrangements for the songs from the first album when we play them live. To get the humor in the lyrics we sometimes channel our inner “Weird Al”. We also take inspiration from some Swedish acts, including Galenskaparna & After Shave, Dökött and Mora Träsk.

Paul: You all have been wrocking for some time now. How has your band evolved over the past decade or so? Are there any big differences that you’ve noticed between when you started and now?

Jimmy: Well, one big difference is that we are now officially a 3-piece. I’ve been playing with Anna and Erik for over 10 years now but never wanted to be acknowledged as a full member. I just considered myself a session/live musician. I grew tired of that stance however because there might have been a chance that I was downplaying my part because I was embarrassed and I am so over that. I am now officially a member of the band. It’s no longer the Swedish Shortsnouts and Jimmy, it’s just the Swedish Shortsnouts and that includes me.

Anna: We really got to a point where Jimmy was contributing so much to the band that him not being a member of it was honestly just ridiculous. I really enjoy the dynamic songwriting process we have now—it’s sometimes Jimmy and Erik, sometimes me and Erik, sometimes one of us working on lyrics or all three of us jamming together and so on. We all bring different ideas and it’s really cool to see how it all comes together in the end.

Paul: I love hearing about DIY wrock recording. What was the recording process like for “Ett litet ägg” and “Magic Stuff”?

Erik: Me and Anna started playing around with our dad’s Mac in 2006. It had a limited version of Cubase, and obviously GarageBand. He also had a single condenser microphone and a MIDI keyboard (seen in the Battle Cedric Diggory music video!). At the time, I found GarageBand way easier to use for our purposes. So our initial MySpace demos as well as the 2009 album “Ett litet ägg” were recorded completely in GarageBand. An observant listener will maybe recognize the drum kit and some of the guitar amp modelling. For the album, I also did some mixing and mastering in Audacity, which helped the production quality a bit. By the time we did “Magic Stuff” in 2016, I had taken up Cubase again. I had produced a few songs already, most notably Pussycat Dolores’ debut album in 2012. This taught me a lot on how to make vocals sound better. We also started having jobs, and therefore more money to spend on the recording than when we were teenagers. This allowed us to record Jimmy’s full drum kit with an 8 microphone setup. I also recorded guitars with a proper amplifier (albeit with cabinet simulation).

Paul: What is the Swedish wrock music like in Sweden? Are you surprised that the country has such a vibrant wrock community?

Anna: The Swedish wrock scene is so much fun! Over time, the Harry Potter community in Sweden has expanded from our online message board origins to include conventions, yule balls, Quidditch and of course wizard rock. There are and have been so many cool and interesting bands that have inspired more and more people to join in, and the growth of local wrock has been an important part of the growth of the local Potter fandom community. The Swedish wrock scene is very collaborative and I love it the best when we get to perform shows with lots of bands in the lineup. At those shows, I think it may be a little difficult for a newcomer to tell exactly who’s in which band, or if we’re not all secretly the same band – Li from Pussycat sings on our song “Harry Potter”, we sing on Pussycat’s song “Drakar behöver regler”, Jimmy is a member of both Shortsnouts and Solitary Snape and lots of people sing backup for Pussycat’s song “Witches unite” – I could go on, we’re always backing each other up somehow. It’s a big part of what’s made the Swedish wrock scene so exciting.

Paul: In your opinion, what is your favorite track that you’ve written and why? Does it have certain meanings? What about your favorite wrock track from the overall genre?

Anna: My favourite Shortsnouts song is “Den svenska kortnosingen”, it’s one of our earlier songs and the first one we wrote about the actual dragon. Writing that song gave us a good sense of who this dragon we’re singing about is, and we’ve been pretty consistent with that initial character voice ever since. Favourite wrock song overall has got to be “The End of My Way” by The Proper Use of a Rubber Duck, it’s such a classic in our local wrock community. I’m also a little obsessed with “Chocolate Frogs Radio Spot” by Shannon Sweeney on the 2019 wrock sampler, I just think it’s such a creative angle and so fun! It’s one of the songs I definitely play when I’m introducing someone to wrock and want to show them everything that wrock can (and should!) be.

Erik: I like when we use an iconic phrase from the books and manage to make a song out of it. “Troll in the dungeon” and “Where to find me” are probably the best examples. Both of them started out with creating a hook containing that line, and working backwards from there. “Where to find me” was especially interesting, because I wrote the music all by myself with only the hook lyric settled. Jimmy then wrote the lyrics to my music, and we used those lyrics with one minor modification. Jimmy’s first version in the second verse read “like a dragon”. We changed it to “I’m a dragon” to make sure the song was from the dragon’s point of view. My favorite wizard rock song? Probably “These days are dark”. I remember playing along to that on the keyboard in my bedroom, saying “what IS this chord progression?!” It’s a great one. Since then I’ve heard this progression in other songs as well. It’s a rare progression that you only bring out for very special songs, similar to Pachelbel’s Canon. Oh, and Accio Fish is good.

Jimmy: My favorite Shortsnouts song I’ve actually done writing and not just arranging on has to be “Lord Voldemorts Begäran”. It was written by me and Erik during the last hour before midnight on New Year’s Eve a few years ago. It’s just a fun little ditty. Plus I get to sing on it which is always cool, since I’m not a very strong singer. And the song always gets a great response at live shows. As for songs by other bands, “The Hallows” and “Flash, Bang, Done” by Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls. Always liked the sort of ethereal sound he had going. I felt like there was a melancholy to his music that I could really get into. And I also have to mention “Holding On” by the Blibbering Humdingers. Hits you right in the feels. Just to end on a happier note I’ll also throw in “This Book is So Awesome 2” by Harry and the Potters and I’m so happy to say that I’ve gotten to perform it live with Paul and Joe.

Paul: What does the future hold in store for the Swedish Shortsnouts?

Anna: Who knows! We never really thought we’d still be going at it after 13 years, but apparently we are! I honestly think right now is such a great time to be a wizard rocker, it really feels like there’s something of a wrock renaissance happening. Anyone thinking it’s too late for them to start a wrock band is definitely wrong, right now is a really great time to become a wizard rocker! We do have some ideas for new songs so hopefully something will come of that eventually, but other than that we’re just enjoying everything that’s going on in wrock right now and being a part of it all.

Erik: During this year, since we haven’t been able to play any live shows with audiences, I’ve taken some time to invest time and money into making sure we have a good setup for doing shows ourselves. Either as live streams for now, or with a live audience whenever that is possible.

Jimmy: There are some demos recorded that I like and I really hope we’ll have a new album out at some point. I think that’s the unofficial plan going forward.

Paul: Finally and most importantly: If you had to smuggle a magical creature into the Muggle world, what would it be and why?

Anna: Obviously, a Swedish Short-Snout, even though it is perhaps debatable how advisable that would be. (Here’s a fun fact: the short-snout in the books is hyphenated, while our band name is not. This was unintentional and happened because the word for short-snout in Swedish, “kortnos”, is not hyphenated. Over time we’ve started to think that’s actually kind of neat.)

Erik: An owl would undoubtedly be the most useful!

Jimmy: A knarl or maybe a blast-ended skrewt.

To support the Swedish Shortsnouts, check out their Bandcamp. You should also follow them on Twitter and give them a like on Facebook!