Brooklyn, NY (The Loving Cup) – If one more person refers to Alberta Cross as an “Anglo-Swedish Americana” band, I’m going to blow a gasket.  The budding five-piece has struggled to evade a throng of such labels and comparisons, including everything from The Band to “Kings of Leon’s mad uncles.”  Though they won’t shy away from citing any of their eclectic influences, the band would certainly appreciate a little artistic credit of their own.
Swedish native Petter Ericson Stakee and London born Terry Wolfers combined creative forces a few years back to form Alberta Cross, now stationed in Brooklyn.  After a few short years in the London scene, Stakee and Wolfers decided to head over-seas, where they met up with the remaining three pieces of the puzzle.  With a successful EP and a promising debut full-length in stores, the band prepares to tour the States before taking off for a month-long European sojourn.  The Inflatable Ferret was able to catch up with them in the intimate Cameo Gallery at The Loving Cup before their departure.

Inflatable Ferret: Ready?

Terry: Yeah, ready. Crack it. Let’s shoot. What’s your first question, come on.

IF: Well, I’m with Terry Wolfers and Petter Ericson Stakee from Alberta Cross. Petter, you were born in Stockholm, is that right?

Petter: Just outside.

IF: And you traveled with your dad, who was also a musician.

Petter: At one point, yeah.

IF: What was his name? I tried looking him up, but I couldn’t find anything.

Petter: He’s called Peter. He’s Peter, I’m Petter.

IF: With one “T” then?

Petter: Yeah, it’s pretty funny.

IF: Do you have a lot of his early recordings?

Petter: Yeah.

IF: And what kind of music did he play?

Petter: I don’t know, Blues, Rock ‘N’ Roll…smooth music.

Terry: As he gets to be older, it’s smoother now. He’s got leather jackets and stuff. There’s a documentary about him, shows how he rode up on his Harley Davidson.

IF: You two met in a bar in London. When did you [Petter] move to London?

Petter: 10 years ago maybe.

IF: And you [Terry] were born in London?

Terry: Yeah.

IF: How did that happen, you guys just randomly met over a drink?

Terry: Yeah, it was just a bar where we had mutual friends – Petter knew someone who worked there and one of the guys who was running it was an old school friend of mine. And it was like a sort of studio – well it was a bar, but it was only there because it was a studio as well. So it was a really cool place, and they were pretty much given free reign, so they could close whenever they wanted. There were no stop checks, so there’d be free drinks going all the time.

IF: Nice.

Terry: Yeah, it was a good couple of years.

Petter: [laughs] Good and bad couple of years.

Terry: Well, it sort of took its toll.

IF: And where’d you meet the other members of the band?

Petter: Well, we sort of started off in London with two other members, but when we moved over to America, we auditioned them in Brooklyn.

IF: I think it’s interesting that while a lot of other Brooklyn bands like MGMT and The Dirty Projectors are trying to make music that’s about as far away from classic rock as possible, whereas you guys don’t even sound like you’re from Brooklyn.

Terry: Yeah, I think it’s cause we’re not really. I mean, Brooklyn is just somewhere where we ended up. It’s the same as London bands as well. We found that when we were in London we didn’t really sound like a London band either. We just sounded like Alberta Cross. And that’s the reason things started happening for us.

Petter: And also, we’re just writing. We’re not trying to follow a certain scene or anything like that. A lot of bands do that. Maybe not MGMT and The Dirty Projectors, but I feel like when one band like MGMT come up, right away you get like 20 that sound exactly like them. And we’re trying not to do that.

IF: So, does that get tired of the Brooklyn scene?

Petter: Actually, we’re still quite new to it. We got really tired of the London scene when we were living there, because it was like 200 bands sounding like Joy Divison, but I do like a lot of bands here. I think they’re great.

IF: I read somewhere that your new album Broken Side of Time is an anagram. Is that right?

Petter: Our name is an anagram.

IF: Oh, you’re name.

Petter: Well, Broken Side of Time is an anagram too.

Terry: It’s all going to come together to make, like, a fucking book.

[everyone laughs]

IF: We actually spent trying to figure out what Broken Side of Time was an anagram for.

Petter and Terry: Oh, what did you come up with for that?

[take piece of paper out of my pocket with anagram brainstorming on it]

Petter: Sweet!

IF: I feel like we’ve got some great ideas for your new album. One was “IKE BITE FOR DEMONS.”

Petter: Sweet.

IF: “I SEEK ME FIND ROBOT”

Petter: Oh, that’s good.

Terry: I bet this was the girls. It wasn’t you two.

IF: [laughs] Yeah. And then “BEER INSIDE KO MOTIF” and that one really doesn’t make any sense, but we thought anything with beer in it would be appropriate for you.

Petter: For me, yeah.

Terry: They’re probably all better than Broken Side of Time.

Petter: That robot one would work pretty well.

IF: So, what is Alberta Cross an anagram for?

Petter: I can’t tell you. You have to figure it out. So next time you interview us, figure that one out.

IF: Fair enough. With all your songs, you keep the same style. And every song definitely has that Alberta Cross imprint. But you span from “ATX” which is really high-energy, in your face, almost like a pump-up song, to a song like “The Thief and the Heartbreaker” which is really soulful and all about the collective unity of the band. How do you go about writing those songs? Do they just come randomly?

Petter: It’s just a different way of writing, you know. Like with “The Thief”, I wrote that one in East London, and then Terry and I were arranging it in the studio for a while, so it came from me writing a song and then Terry and I kind of working on it to get it right. But “ATX” is one of our first jams with this band in the rehearsal room. We were all sort of jamming together, and it came up from a few chords that I came up with, and they came up with the groove. It’s really like a band thing, so that’s really important.

IF: I noticed “The Thief and the Heartbreaker” which is the title track to your mini album/EP in 2007 was redone for the album. Was that just because you wanted to touch it up?

Petter: Well yeah, it’s just that “The Thief and the Heartbreaker” EP was our first few demos. I like the vibe of them. This is just a different vibe, but we definitely felt like if we were going to re-record them for this album we were going to have to do them up a bit and change them. It’s a bit faster I think, but yea, we just changed it up a bit.

IF: Obvious a live show has different objectives than an album, but what specifically do you try to bring into your live shows.

Terry: At the moment, it’s just stuff we’re trying out from show to show. You know, we’ve done festivals and stuff like that, but we haven’t done a really good solid tour coming out from the album. We want to keep it fresh for ourselves, you know, and fresh for people. If they come and see one show and the next time they get to see something different it’s nice. It’s not always preplanned. It’s like maybe when we start the song, Petter will be like, “Alright, for that bit, just watch me and go with it.” Or something like that.

IF: You guys had what I assume is your first crack at the festival scene. You were all over the place – Coachella, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, you’re about to do Austin City Limits. What has your experience been like with that?

Terry: Amazing.

Petter: Great.

Terry: I don’t know, we just go and do it, and it’s a show, and it’s amazing to be there. But when you reflect back on it and when you speak to people they’re like, “Fuck man, you just played like all the festivals that bands dream of playing.” And at the time, you just want to go out and do a great show. You’re not really thinking about the big picture. So when you look back on it, it’s a bit mind-blowing. They’ve been great. We’ve played to a lot of people that we wouldn’t have played to.

Petter: It’s good for us because when we started up we played a lot of English festivals, and there are a lot of great festivals in England. And we really wanted to come over to America and play. Now that we’ve played them it’s been a great experience. And they are different from English festivals, so it’s a new experience.

Terry: They’re a lot hotter.

Petter: A lot hotter. It’s like summer all year round.

Terry: And a bit dryer. Coachella and Lollapalooza were just fucking intense.

Petter: We were pretty much dying. I almost spewed halfway through that Coachella set and the Bonnaroo set.

[opening band starts to warm up loudly]

Petter: I think they’re going to play.

Terry: [to manager, Anders] That’s the same band with played with last time, isn’t it?

Anders: They have a residence here.

Terry: Oh really? Ah shit.

IF: Well I guess we’ll kind of wrap it up while they’re warming up. Obviously there’s a lot of classic rock influence. People have compared you to Neil Young and The Band. What would you say have been your greatest influences?

Petter: Both of them, yeah, definitely. I love them. I think this album was more influenced by – well, I was listening to a lot of things. We listened to…Nick Cave, Sonic Youth, Depeche Mode, soul stuff, Motown.

Terry: There’s tons of stuff. There’s not like one genre or a group of four bands that you could site. If you listen to a lot of it, sometimes I hear stuff where I’m like, “Oh shit, it sounds like that” afterwards. I’ll say, “Oh, yeah, it reminds me a little bit of that now” not thinking of it at the time. But between the five of us, there’s such a diverse range from 20’s gospel to electonica. It’s just whatever comes out.

IF: And I know you’re just putting out your debut album, so I’m sure you want to relish that, but do you have anything specific planned for the future or are you just going to kind of stay around?

Petter: Tour everywhere, man. Just go out and play for everyone everywhere. That’s pretty much our plan at the moment.

Terry: I think new material as well. Because it takes so long to get from the beginning of making the album and getting it done and so much comes up in the meantime. I think we’re looking forward to starting work on some new material as well.

IF: Alright, well thanks a lot guys.

Petter and Terry: Of course.

Interview: James Passarelli
Photos: Rachel Luba and Aldo Juraidini

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