¡Bang Bang Watergun! on the Jam Sessions and Group Effort That Made Their Sophomore Album Shine
Norwegian band ¡Bang Bang Watergun! weaves jazz influences into their synth-heavy rock and pop sound to create melodies like no other. The five-piece formed when bassist Erlend Tredal tapped vocalist Ragnhild Og, guitarist Ask Vatn Strøm, keyboardist David Andreas Emhjellen Paulsen and drummer Sigmund Vestrheim to play with him as part of a mid-year school exam in 2018. The success of their performance prompted them to stay together and start recording their own music, gracing the world with catchy ear worms through their thoughtful songwriting and production.
Building upon the raunchy and funky sounds of their 2022 debut album, Colors, the band released their sophomore album, Nostalgia / Again It’s On, last month. Recorded in a cabin about two hours outside of Oslo, the 13-track record guides listeners through the dreamy landscape of the band’s explorative sound.
Video-chatting across the Atlantic, I spoke with Erlend, Ragnhild and David of ¡Bang Bang Watergun! about the band’s origins, their new album and what lies ahead.
Photo by Elias Selvik Undal.
How did you come up with the name “¡Bang Bang Watergun!”?
Erlend: It was a car ride. I was sitting alone and thinking about how the band was, like it should be playful and it should be energetic.
Ragnhild: Just like the music.
Erlend: Yeah, like the music. And then that came to me, I guess, with some inspiration from a band called “Pangpang,” which was like two years over me in school. So yeah, it's trying to get both the playfulness and the energetic vibes of the music.
Ragnhild: And I remember the first time you introduced the name to the rest of us, we were sitting on the couch, and Erlend was sitting in front of us: “Okay, I have a band name ready. Are you ready guys? ¡Bang Bang Watergun!” And we were like, “Okay, yeah ….” It wasn't like, “Oh, that's so nice.”
David: We weren’t immediately convinced.
Ragnhild: But it grew on us.
Your sophomore album, Nostalgia / Again It’s On, came out just under two weeks ago. Can you talk about what the process for creating this album was like compared to your debut, Colors?
Erlend: Yeah, I think the most different part was when we made and recorded our first album, we had worked with the songs a lot before going to the studio. But with this album, Nostalgia / Again It’s On, it was more of booking the studio, and then, like, the five first days we started to make a lot of songs there in the studio, just jamming a lot and having just some small parts, maybe, ready and then just sitting together in the studio and, yeah, both making the songs and recording them simultaneously.
David: I think when we went to the studio the first time, we had, like, everything ready. We had already made some demos of the songs, and it was music that we had played live as well and you [Erlend] had written most of it? At least the initial ideas?
Erlend: Yeah. But this album was more like everyone contributing their part and we've been playing a lot together, so we started to work very well together, so it was very seamless. Like when someone was tired and not having the energy to come up with ideas or something, someone else was like, “Okay, I am ready. I got this and I got this,” and so we basically worked from early morning to late night, because we had a studio in a cabin where we also slept and ate and hung out.
Even going back to your first ever song released, “disperse,” I’ve noticed you’ve always been really explorative with your sound, like using funky synth and guitar settings. What’s your process for songwriting like and do you have any particular influences you look up to?
Ragnhild: I think we start with the instrument parts and then mostly me and Erlend is making the vocal melodies on top of that afterwards. That’s the process, basically, on every song.
Erlend: I think it usually always starts with some riff of some sort or a little melody like a bass riff or maybe some keys stuff, so always starting with some riff and building from there. And like I said, this album was more like we jammed out together, so one part going to the other and playing together.
David: And throwing off ideas of each other, like “Okay, I like this thing but maybe Ask, if you can play this on the guitar instead, and what if you try this.”
Erlend: And I think that's what makes the music as well, because all of us have different influences going in individually, and I think that's the thing that makes the music more unique and more exciting, the fact that it's not just one person having like, “I have these funk inspirations” or something. It's like, this guy having more beat and then especially our guitarist is a very rock and roll kind of guy.
Ragnhild: And I am inspired by Lana Del Rey, so the merge of that is very unique.
Erlend: So you get both.
What song on the new album was written the fastest and which took the longest?
Erlend: I think all of them were kind of fast in the way that it just felt like we were flowing in the studio.
Ragnhild: Maybe “Well, I Tried” because we had the riff and it was like the melody came really fast. Also “Mad,” maybe. And I have the answer for the song that took the longest time. That was “What Was I Scared Of?” because I was like, “What the heck should this song be about?” and I couldn’t figure out the lyrics for years. And then I got older, and then I got anxiety from getting older, and then the lyrics came to me.
Erlend: That song was also, we made something in the studio, then brought it home, listened to it, and were like, “This bridge is not working,” so we had to rewrite that again and I think we had some tries. It’s been a long process.
I want to talk about the instrumental interludes on the new album, “Wrong or Right” and “Am I Too Much,” because tracks like these are kind of a dying art. Why did you decide to include these short but incredibly punchy interludes on the album?
Erlend: I've listened to a lot of albums which have these kind of interludes, just small instrumental parts, or with some vocals and I feel like it really builds the universe in an album, in contrast to an album where it's another song and then another song and then another song and it feels like just a list of songs, but it's kind of a simple way of building it to something more, in my opinion. And also I think with this album it was just in between eating and two guys, you [David] and Sigmund, were ready before us.
David: Yeah, we were just playing and we played “Am I Too Much?” Is that the one? I don’t know names.
Erlend: Yeah, that was just you two jamming …
David: For like a minute and then we were like, “We should probably play this.” And it’s fun to have something that is just a spur of the moment idea that gets to live without being processed.
Erlend: And the other instrumental I remember was Ask, our guitar player, just simply wanting to have something with [sings melody of “Wrong or Right”].
David: His main band, Kanaan, it’s like psych rock.
Erlend: So he loves that kind of guitar and that kind of rock and roll stuff. And yeah, I think it's simply like the mindset of us being musicians and wanting to jam and wanting to do some experiments.
You released The Living Room Sessions EP with stripped back “living room versions” of songs from Colors. Can fans expect a similar EP for Nostalgia / Again It’s On?
Erlend: There is nothing planned yet, but it was a really fun session to do, really fun to try out the songs more stripped down. In that way you sort of get the grasp of what the song is to its core. It's a very fun way to work with our songs, which, especially the first album, have a lot of synths and toying with the sounds and stuff, and just going down to one piano, so maybe.
David: “I Don’t Know” was part of that, which was written annoyingly because an old white guy, like a baby boomer, came to us after a concert and said we needed a song in our set that was quiet and we needed more dynamics in our set and we were like “F*ck that guy, he knows nothing.”
Ragnhild: And he was right.
Erlend: We were trying to not let it go in on us, but in reality it hit something, some player, I guess, and we made a ballad.
Are you planning on touring or performing any shows soon?
Erlend: Hopefully. We're working on it, trying to get something in the fall, maybe. But at the moment we're doing everything totally independent, so all the booking and all of the releasing and promoting is us doing the work, and between this and other projects and stuff going on, it's kind of hard to get the time for everything. But yeah, absolutely thinking about touring the album.
What song from the new album are you most excited to play live?
Ragnhild: I love “Mad” because I love the rhythmic parts and yeah, everything. It's so fun. We played that at a concert last fall, and I was like, “This is my favorite song, get ready.”
Erlend: For me it’s maybe one of the songs we haven’t played live yet because we’ve payed “Well, I Tired” and some other songs, but we haven’t played “Nostalgia / Again It’s On”
Ragnhild: And “Desperate” also.