The Bängts
Four men named Bengt, one basement, zero invitations. The Bängts play punk waltzes about home-distilled liquor, fireworks and getting left out, loud enough to set off the fire alarm upstairs.
Debutalbum
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Bengt wasn't invited to Linda's New Year's party. So he takes his best stained blazer, the home-distilled brännvin and a pocketful of firecrackers down to storage unit 14 and toasts himself. At midnight the fire alarm goes off, the whole party ends up in the snow in their socks, and for the first time in twenty years Bengt is standing with everyone else. Utom Roffe.
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At the very back of storage unit fourteen, behind the drums, a broom and a bucket, sits Bängt-Åke Nilsson, holding the whole band together without anyone noticing. A slow, weepy punk waltz with a howling sax solo, about the drummer who always gets left out of the toast.
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There used to be a crate of brown bottles under the kitchen sink, and every cap that popped off landed in the sink with a clink. Now everything comes in cans: the tab snaps off, you cut your lip, and the beer tastes of tin. He has asked in every shop and every bar, but the kid behind the counter just calls him grandpa and tells him they're gone. A swaying lament for anyone who still misses the smooth, cold neck of a glass bottle.
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Bängt Ljungqvist has never been happier. Måna ran off with Roffe, the sofa's gone, and nobody nags about shoes in the hallway anymore. Brännvin for breakfast, accordion in his underpants – total freedom. But when the boys head home from the storage room, he's alone at the sink in her flowery apron, facing a washing machine with forty buttons he doesn't understand. A bittersweet minor-key punk waltz about being free as a bird. And about the dishes that are still there.
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Moose season, frost in the beard, and Bängt Ljungqvist alone on his pass with a thermos of black coffee and a generous splash from his own still. With every cup the forest gets cozier, the waltz gets faster and the hunt gets further from his mind. So far, in fact, that he never notices the curious bull creeping up behind him until it sniffs him in the neck. What follows is the clumsiest rifle fumble in Norrland hunting history. The moose got away. The coffee didn't.
Track page → - …More songs are being distilled in the basement.
Utom Bengt
The Bängts formed on New Year's Eve in the basement storage units of an ordinary Norrland apartment building. Everyone upstairs was at Linda's party, except four men named Bengt. Each had been left off a guest list somewhere, at some point, in pencil.
They found each other between the winter tires and last year's Christmas trees, shared a bottle from Bengt L's home still, and set off a firecracker that triggered the fire alarm and emptied the whole party into the snow. That was their first gig.
They changed the spelling to "Bängt" because it sounds like a bang, and because nobody was going to invite them anyway. The sound is punk waltz: dansband's three-four sway, played too loud, too drunk and too bitter to dance to properly.
Bandet
Divorced. Owns the still.
Knows three chords and where to buy fireworks out of season.
Bought the organ secondhand without legs. It sits on crates of empty bottles.
Plays both, sometimes at once. Has never been invited to anything.
Rivaler
The sequin-clad dansband whose bassist, Roffe, is not welcome in the basement. He knows why.
Photographed outside förråd 14. The sign on the door is not theirs.