Swedish born/London-based artrock trio Junodef shares an exclusive breakdown of their latest EP, Catastrophical. Junodef are best friends Karin Grönkvist (guitar and vocals), Norea Persson (drums and electronics) and Tyra Örnberg (bass and vocals). Catastrophical shows Junodef at their best and leaves the door open for more.
Justice
Karin: When writing this song I visualised the music video for it whilst writing, so that instead of making the song from scratch I had this visual element to help me tell a story, and simply follow the narrative of the video as I imagined it. It was a really fun way to write, and although the upcoming music video for ‘Justice’ isn’t exactly like the one I imagined when writing the song, it definitely tells the same story. Keep an eye out for that one when it comes out, which will be very soon…
Anemone
Tyra: The inspiration for the lyrics to this song came from a book about nuns in a convent during the early renaissance. And a lot of the words too. I often follow this process when writing lyrics, where I take a book that I like, and open it on a random page, and go to a row determined by a number I have chosen ahead (usually seven), and from that row I pick one word and write it down on a piece of paper. I continue this process until I have a full page full of random words, and then I start picking words from this page, and add some new ones, until I have something that makes sense. It usually doesn’t take long before this starts to organically grow, and become words that I can attribute a meaning to. These particular lyrics (unsurprisingly) grew into a song about sapphic desire and obsessive longing, accompanied by the overwhelming fear and anxiety born out of the good ol’ internalised homophobia. You could say it’s a song about lesbian nuns, but I also think it can be applied to a lot more, and be relatable for quite a few people. It’s a pretty universal subject after all.
Musically the song grew out of an improvisation in the sound of heavily distorted double bass, which later became the main guitar riff. The gloomy church organ followed after, in theme with the renaissance inspired lyrics. And with the epic drum, distorted guitar and church organ heavy choruses, contrasting the more vulnerable verses rooted in a looming synth bass and dreamy guitars, bass and piano, I wanted the music to reflect the duality of emotions explored in the lyrics.
When The Day Comes Around
Karin: This song came easy. We were all quite frustrated with our life situations at the time, not feeling like we had the time to focus on the things we wanted to focus on and frankly feeling quite burnt out. The song is really just about that, about not glorifying ‘the grind’ and to actually take a minute to question these unreasonable ideals of how to live your life in late-stage capitalism. Usually we will rewrite parts of a song for ages, rearranging and trying different instrumentations and melodies, but this one just arrived. It’s super poppy and quite simple, but we all liked it and related to it in some way.
The music video is a collection of clips filmed on my camcorder, of our closest friends and family, hanging out and having a good time. It’s highlighting the things we like to do, and the people we love, and taking a step away from the pressure of constant productivity and stress.
Åslög
Tyra: This one is about being socially exhausted, and not wanting to see or talk to anyone, but to just stay at home, stare at the wall and disappear into the dark corridors of your own mind. Ironically, I wrote this in March 2020, so my apologies if I somehow magically made the following two years happen…It wasn’t my intention!!
Sometime
Tyra: This song is a commentary on the terrible things people in power can get away with. It was written after the outing of a famous man in Sweden behaving like a pig. We wanted the music to feel dark, raw and threatening, with Massive Attack inspired drums and basslines.
She Wants To Win
Karin: The song was actually written quite a long time ago in a cabin in the Swedish woods, when I had borrowed my brother’s synth and started playing around with different sounds and melodies. At the time it was very different from what our other songs sounded like, but it turned out to be an important step towards a new sound that we still play around with.
I wrote it in the wake of some turbulent times where I was forced to reevaluate some friendships and relationships. The song is basically about people who feel entitled to you, your time and your energy, and who will try to “keep you” rather than respect you as your own person with your own wishes and priorities. I think a lot of people have been in situations where they feel like they have some unreasonable expectations put on them by someone who is not quite accepting of the fact that a friendship or relationship is a two-way dynamic. Fulfilling expectations that I’m not interested in fulfilling has never been my thing, so when a person is trying so hard to keep you in their grip, and you’re simply not that bothered it becomes quite a weird and almost ridiculous dynamic – which I tried to capture in the song.
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