Indie artists have long figured out the formula to sustaining a career in the wilds of the music industry: Don’t slow down. Keep cranking out new material at the most fevered pace you can manage and playing as many shows as your schedule will allow. If they can’t avoid you, they might start paying attention.
It’s a precept that the Swedish pop group Hater have held to since forming in 2016. In just over three years, the quartet has released a wealth of material, including last year’s sumptuous full-length Siesta and a bevy of singles and EPs, and used up all their vacation days playing concerts around the EU and their current tour of the United States, which stops tonight at the Sunset Tavern.
“That was something we really wanted to happen,” says guitarist Måns Leonartsson, “to write stuff quick and record it and put it out. It’s always really frustrating to play in bands that take a long time, putting out songs one and a half years after recording them. By that time, you don’t really feel like playing it anymore.”
Thomasson’s comment might be a small dig at Kust, the band that he and his three bandmates were all members of before forming Hater. Both the music and the output of their former group moved at a much slower pace, resulting in a fine (if slim) discography of turbulent post-punk punctuated by booming drums and bellowing vocals. Hater is, in every way, a much different animal. The quartet’s output has been deliriously melodic, pushing off from their shoegaze influences into more jangly waters and making great use of the gleaming vocals of guitarist Caroline Landahl.
“At first I was super scared, because I was convinced I couldn’t sing,” she remembers. “Lukas [Thomasson, Hater’s drummer] talked me into it. ‘Be fierce! Sing something!’ Then I got some courage. And it’s fun, so why not do it?”
“Fun” is not a word that often gets floated when people talk about Hater. Critics and some fans tend to focus on the downcast tone of songs like “All That Your Dreams Taught Me” and “I Wish I Gave You More Time Because I Love You,” which picks at the wounds of fizzled relationships and the mistakes made in them. To their credit, the members of the band don’t push back against those assertions of Hater being a bunch of Swedish sad sacks.
“I think it’s really hard to write something that’s really happy,” Landahl says. “It doesn’t come naturally. I’d have to be a bit off to make it really happy. Otherwise, it’s just boring. Maybe we should try harder and see where we land. Maybe we’ll write one happy song on the next record.”
Hater’s next record will likely come soon. They already have a pair of new singles floating around the Internet, including the exquisite “It’s a Mess” and have designs on writing their third full-length before the year is out.
The only struggle at this point seems to be how much time the members of Hater can devote to the band. All four have day jobs, with Landahl working in a thrift store and Leonartsson employed by a film festival in the band’s hometown of Malmö.
“I think we manage it well, but it’s really tough,” Leonartsson says. “But this is also too much fun not to do. We all agree on that. Of course, it’s not always fun, but it’s also important to do because we can and we want to.”