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Biography by Maja Karlsson, former bass player | |For about six years I played the bass in Envelopes. The first five of those, I only met the band a |few weekends a year, and during those weird Christian holidays. Audrey, Henrik and Fredrik |hung out and recorded some tracks on the computer. Once in a while we assembled for a couple |of days of around-the-clock rehearsals, to pull off some show, usually in Paris. The first show ever |was in Sweden though. That’s when Filip was recruited and a proper functioning pop band was |created. Indeed. The show was quite well received, but was to be our last on Swedish turf for a |long time. We played every Parisian venue, and Benicassim Festival in Spain, before getting any |recognition at all in Sweden. | |Eventually, Envelopes were approached by London based label Brille Records. We were going to |be their first band. To make it work professionally though, we had to meet more often than a |couple of times a year, and cut a few years from our usual song production time. So we had a crack at it, and told Brille what we needed to be a proper functioning band, for real: a house for |five people, with recording equipment, and no obligations to work with anything other than the |music to support our living. What do you know? They said yes. | |To this day the band have cost tons and made zero money, but a few people think they are the |best band ever. Music always gets you right at the heart when it risks being ridiculous. Envelopes |are very direct and uncomplicated in this way. And yet, in other ways, elusive. The message is |never in the lyrics, and rarely in a hook, but rather somewhere in the saturated cluster of |melodies, woven into a multi-coloured flying rug, circling around your head on its passing. You |have to hear it. Really. It is a message of all-defying unjustified joy. And ‘Here Comes the Wind’ is a |future classic. Usually I’m all about “to each their own” and unwilling to pass aesthetic |judgement, but this album is of profound quality. | |My last nine months with the band, in 2005, I lived with them in a big house outside Elvington, |North Yorkshire, surrounded by vast fields of farmland. Animal Farm, GTA San Andreas and |the 144 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, imported from Hong Kong, only lasted so long. |Cabin fever, running out of heating oil and endless amounts of rain nearly broke us. Our hope |was only kept alive by frequent London shows and the pot of gold stored on our hard drive, the |possibility of a damn good album. Sometimes we could almost touch it. I have heard seven |versions of some of these songs and recorded half of them. There were a few defiantly behaving |children I thought I would never see, or hear, released. That’s why it is so rewarding to finally |hear them completed. Although, I must admit that the versions I am listening to whilst writing |this will undergo a few changes still. It is Envelopes we are talking about and they have serious |problems declaring anything finished and final. | |I am proud of this bunch. I had to jump ship shortly after the efforts of six months of recording |were reinterpreted as “sketches”, and recording from scratch was declared to commence in a real |studio. But they bit the bullet. It’s been over a year now, and I have hardly seen them. They |entered boot camp mode, closed the blinds and learned how to use the fancy coffee machine in |southern Sweden’s Tambourine Studios. And then they didn’t leave. | |Halfway through their Tambourine exile I saw one of their rare Swedish concerts. It’s such a |treat to be off-duty and just enjoy the show. My last effort for the band was writing a book of bass |tablature for my replacement Ulf, for him to learn before their tour. He did it flawlessly. Listening |to my favourite band playing my favourite songs on stage, for the first time, was easily one of my |very best concert moments. It happened to be the band I had never been able to see before, since |I was in it. They were good. Very good. Do try and see them. People usually really like it. |
