San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
First Aid Kit reliving sisters’ pain
When Klara and Johanna Söderberg set out to record their latest album in 2017, they had Klara’s recent heartbreak in mind. Now, ahead of First Aid Kit’s appearance at the Masonic in San Francisco on Friday, Sept. 28, the context of “Ruins” has changed for the 27-year-old Johanna. “When we made ‘Ruins,’ we were just in totally different phases of life,” the elder Söderberg explains. “I was in a very safe, stable relationship and not much was happening. It’s really boring to write about great love, but Klara had this thing happen to her that really shook her to the core.”
Before they were crafting lush folk odes to heartache, First Aid Kit began as two teenage sisters from Stockholm uploading covers and songs of their own to YouTube and MySpace.
In 2008, their cover of Fleet Foxes’ “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” attracted the attention of frontman Robin Peckinold, who enthusiastically shared it with his followers. By 2012, Klara and Johanna had recorded at Jack White’s Third Man Records, performed for Patti Smith at the Polar Music Prize gala, and recorded their second album with Bright Eyes producer Mike Mogis at the helm.
Having released three albums in six years, First Aid Kit opted to take a well-deserved respite in late summer 2015 following touring duties for their breakthrough third album, “Stay Gold.” Klara took the opportunity to spend time with her fiance in Manchester, England, but unfortunately her relationship soon fell apart.
The songs on “Ruins” — like ominous opener “Rebel Heart” and the forlorn proclamations of “Fireworks” — represent the darkest chapter of First Aid Kit so far, with the band rendering the familiar sounds of acoustic guitars, pedal steel and harmonies into the unmistakable form of a breakup album.
At the time the duo was recording, Johanna recalls connecting to the songs through the struggles her 25-year-old sister had endured. However, when Johanna’s own relationship ended just as “Ruins” was released this January, the tracks inherited a new, painfully personal context.
“I’ve had to go through a breakup and sing these songs about Klara’s breakup every day,” Johanna says, “It’s been really f—ing hard, to be honest. I couldn’t really relate to the songs before in the same way that I can now.”
Beyond the difficulties of reliving heartache on a nightly basis, First Aid Kit has also struggled to break free from the confines of being labeled a “folk act.” It likely doesn’t help that First Aid Kit’s biggest hit, “Emmylou,” takes its name from one of folk and country’s most acclaimed artists.
But the popularity of “Emmylou” hasn’t been all negative. Aside from helping First Aid Kit’s second album, “The Lion’s Roar,” sell more than 250,000 copies worldwide, the track also led Emmylou Harris herself to visit the band before a show in Nashville this year.
First Aid Kit now plays many of the same festivals and venues as its longtime idol — the Söderbergs have twice performed at San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, where Harris is a fixture — but Johanna still describes their brief Nashville encounter as “surreal.”
“She was talking to us and I was just thinking, ‘I’m standing next to Emmylou Harris. I’m standing next to Emmylou Harris,’ ” she recalls with a laugh. “I’m still in that mode, and I think Klara is too. We’re still such huge music fans. It’s hard to see ourselves in the same sort of world as them — even though we are.”
While folk is indeed one of the primary musical legacies that the band has drawn from, they also incorporate elements of pop, country and rock, so Johanna remains hopeful that fans and critics will take the time to see that the music she and Klara make touches on a diverse range of inspirations.
“People just love labels,” Johanna says. “We’ve never been strictly one genre. I think if you go to our show, you’ll see that it’s a wide array of genres. I don’t think anyone could accuse us of being a one-trick pony.”
One such effort to prove the variety of their tastes is a cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” that the band often incorporates into their sets.
“It is fun to shock people,” Johanna says. “Actually, we just played in our hometown in Stockholm, and we brought out a rap artist. It’s important to get out of your comfort zone.”
At present, First Aid Kit is excited to have some new songs to play as they celebrate the release of the “Tender Offerings” EP, consisting of tracks that didn’t make the cut on “Ruins.” Johanna is also looking forward to the band’s next record, which she and Klara intend to be a happier, less wrenching effort.
“I think our next record won’t be as sad,” she says. “I can’t take it anymore. It needs to be slightly more hopeful at least.”