A Camp’s new album lets each member shine

• By JOHN WIRT
• Music critic
• Published: Jun 5, 2009

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Like many artists, the members of New York City trio A Camp keep their day jobs.

Nina Persson’s day job is singing with the internationally popular Swedish pop-rock band the Cardigans. Nathan Larson, formerly with American rock band Shudder To Think, writes film scores. He’s also Persson’s husband. Niclas Frisk leads Atomic Swing, another Swedish band. 

But now the day jobs are on hold. A Camp released its second album, Colonia, in April. The group began its first American tour last month at The Bowery Ballroom in New York.

Persson, Larson and Frisk see A Camp as a venue that lets each of them shine.

“Yeah, that was the whole idea, to get all of us to really blossom,” Persson said last week from Philadelphia, A Camp’s third tour stop.

“Nathan has his film world,” she said. “He’s really good at creating mood and kooky, interesting sounds. Niclas is amazing when it comes to arrangements and melodies, extra colors and so forth. We wanted to utilize that this time and make the production large and very pregnant.”

And Persson brings her dreamy, melancholy, Scandinavian voice. She’s a thoughtful lyricist, too, musing in “My America,” for instance, about her new life as a full-time resident of the United States.

“I’m a sucker for the American dream,” she said. “I’m coming to America to take my profession further and to be inspired to do what a lot of other people did before me. I think it’s lovely to admit that in a song, but, still, America is a big, spoiled bitch sometimes.”

A Camp began in 1997, far from New York, when Persson and Frisk retreated to a snowy forest in northern Sweden. They drank chicory coffee, ate pancakes covered in maple syrup and recorded unfocused demos that echoed their romantic obsession with America and its new roots-music movement.

Persson later got a cassette demo of the sessions to one of her American music heroes, Sparklehorse leader Mark Linkous. He loved it.

“Which was an amazing dream for any musician, that your hero appreciates your music,” she said.

Linkous produced A Camp’s first CD during magical and, in retrospect, luxurious circumstances at the famous Bearsville Studios near Woodstock, N.Y. Released in 2001, A Camp’s country-pop debut found success in Europe, especially Sweden.

But then the trio’s day jobs intervened. Persson recorded two more Cardigans records. Larson composed film scores. Frisk returned to Atomic Swing and produced records for other bands.