2007.
Lots have happened since 1997, but our music is still a disturbing comment on everything you like: your Mp3's, your TV, your brain. After ten years of crafting and cursing we´re ready for another run. If we want to, we´ll take this show around the globe, feel free to join.
We can make a mess, make you hyperactive, create stress and maybe be the sedative. We can be the flowers that crack the concrete. You might hate us, but what we tell is the truth. It is only electric guitars and invisible scars.
1997-2006.
WHAT'S IN A NAME:
At first, the name seems arbitrary, but that's how fate works: in twists.
Laura Lee is a soul singer. A day in Sweden around September 1997, a cardboard
box was looked at. The ink on the side of the box read, simply, "Division
of:" A band was given a name. It doesn't mean anything, really. DIVISION
OF LAURA LEE have taken the austere, once-scattered audial cues laid out
by the likes of Fugazi and The Jesus and Mary Chain, and made them bionic.
By taking the abrasive, barbed wire angularity of a band like Nation of
Ulysses and spooling it around the honeyed hook-resplendent static of
The Trans Megetti and the raw onslaught of early At-The-Drive-In, the
result is a band that sounds like nothing you've ever heard exactly before
yet is almost immediately familiar. The band is composed of honest, down-to-earth
people, making the best music they know how. Don't let their modesty mask
their power and don't forget that from the land that brought us such innovations
as the penis pump and dynamite, Swedes have a sense of humor. You, too,
would go nuts if the sun set for solely an hour or two during the summer.
This, perhaps, explains their video for "Need to Get Some" with
the band dressed like big, fluffy penguins and bears, all with violent
red eyes, visiting a lady friend in the hospital.
THE TRANSFORMING:
Intuitive radar. It's a simple thing to write about and extremely hard
for bands to pull off. All four band members - and best friends - had
been kicking around the Swedish hardcore music scene for years, weaned
off the likes of Black Flag, Sonic Youth, The Velvet Underground, and
Minor Threat. Each prior project met its loud, hard, fast limitations,
yet the four were drawn together by the simple, continued drive for the
love of music. The chemistry was instant, more perfect than imagined.
A transformation occurred. They instantly started forming the anxious
yet agreeable musical language of DIVISION OF LAURA LEE. From such humble
beginnings of playing hardcore, Per just "wanted to show my Mom I'm
good, to make a living off of playing music." In an afternoon, after
the budding band had put down its instruments, he looked around and thought,
"We're going to be one of the best bands in the world." Foolhardy?
Perhaps at the beginning since none of the members were born with a silver
spoon in their mouths.
"We all came from shitty areas and the working class. We're misfits.
I've always used music as self-expression to get away from anxiety."
They spread their word one show at a time. They recorded a slew of singles,
which were then all collected and made into an album. They toured. The
band's gigantic ambition was solely matched by their ability to convince
everyone who saw them that they, truly, were rock n' roll saviors, particularly
in Dresden. It was a show with a bill shared with a hard rock band comprised
of men all in their 50s, the audience even older. "There were no
posters, no promotion." Per said, "A bunch of old people showed
up. We said, 'What the hell?'" It took a couple of songs, but by
the end of the set, the DIVISION OF LAURA LEE had a new club full of hard-won
fans.
THE RISE:
Sometimes, if you push a ball hard, fast, and high enough, it becomes
a meteor. Club shows and constant touring opened up avenues to festival
bookings. At one such festival, Per claims that it wasn't their best by
a long shot. "We crashed our guitars at the end of it. It wasn't
so good." Even on a bad day, Burning Heart Records felt differently.
DIVISION OF LAURA LEE's performance that day sealed the deal. A record
was to be made.
WHAT TO EXPECT:
They're able to pull off huge musical vistas while retaining a tight-locking
mesh. In other words, songs to make out to, songs to bob your head to,
songs to laugh along to, songs to shake your fist along to. The fruit
from the vine: DIVISION OF LAURA LEE’s first full-length, Black
City not only sounds big and great and expertly executed, but full of
the type of tension that comes from true suffering and deep-seated humor,
from musicians who don't live in a made-up world, by men that have lived,
wrestled, and drank truths of both darkness and light and have come out
with a big, big record that is here with a lofty goal: to help save your
rock n' roll soul.
Photo: David Holloway
(Left to Right)
Håkan Johansson / Drums, Design
Per Stålberg / Guitar, Vocals
David Fransson / Guitar, Vocals
Jonas Gustafsson / Bass, Vocals