In a fizz of punk-spirited, giddy energy and a tumult of raw feelings about growing up and the often-chaotic pursuit of a full and fun life comes the debut LP from Stockholm's Clutter. Sugar Rush rings with the exact spark of excitement that its name suggests. “We thought about lots of different titles but I always landed in candy territory every time,” grins Hilda Ander. Co-vocalist Emma French nods: “Sugar Rush really captures the feeling that anything could happen…”
Though Sugar Rush is packed full of spontaneity and instinctiveness, the band have reached this debut album milestone not because they’ve just let anything happen, but because they’ve actively made it happen themselves. Completed by guitarist Ove Jerndal and drummer Ville Scott (Hilda and Emma both alternate between guitar and bass), the band have crafted the entire world of Clutter from the ground up.
Having played separately and, in the case of Ove and Ville, together in various childhood bands, by the time Clutter’s members united at their music high school, they’d already had more experience than most teens of their age. Without a huge amount of options to play underage shows in Stockholm, they’d put on DIY gigs in their local youth centre. When they started to record - releasing charmingly scrappy debut EP Clutter Loves You last year and receiving immediate attention from the likes of So Young, Stereogum, Dork and The Line of Best Fit - they kept everything in house still, with Ove producing all the band’s material from a basement studio in Stockholm.
Influenced by DIY bands from across the generations, from Bikini Kill to Pavement, Sonic Youth and the fictional universe of Scott Pilgrim vs The World, they’ve made an asset of their youth, prioritising immediacy and energy over pre-prescribed paths and polish. However now, having spent the year since Loves You touring constantly, coming over to the UK multiple times and playing bucket list support shows with Hinds and ShitKid, the still only 22-year-old quartet have found a way to maintain this hedonistic punk energy and level it all up.
“It was a big thing just to see how much better of a band we’ve become over this last year, and how easy it is now for us to write songs that we love. Playing so many more shows has definitely influenced us - now we want an album that sounds like what we sound like live,” says Ove. “I think it’s made us more ambitious,” nods Hilda. “We’ve grown up a bit and developed our music tastes and, playing live, you realise it’s more fun to scream than to whisper…”
If Sugar Rush is a scream - a rockier, heavier leap forward from the more Britpop-influenced sound of their previous EP - then it’s one that Clutter have put their all into vocalising. They’ve done everything themselves, writing the album whilst balancing studies and part time jobs, and recording it in a concentrated trip to Ove’s family home in rural Sweden. Knowing that they wanted to act quickly and document this pivotal moment in their lives, they worked fast and hard. “It’s important to state how much we wanted this to happen. It was all willpower,” says Ove. “Loves You was about growing up, but now we’re learning how to be adults whilst trying to stay true to our inner children,” says Hilda. “This album is about becoming an adult on your own terms. I don’t want to feel like a teenager, but I still want to live as I want and do what I want to do.”
Across its 10 tracks, Clutter’s debut album makes a convincing case for following your own path and doing it with abandon. They’ve expanded their lyrical world to encompass the new stories permeating their real lives: moving out, falling in love, making sense of complicated friendships. But at their heart is still the core desire to be playful, and to ensure that any moments of turmoil are always offset with that delicious, sugary kick. “We like contrasts. We talk about things that are pretty and glittery, but the music is heavy,” says Hilda. “That balance is something we think about a lot.”
Take the riot grrl thrash of insatiable lead single ‘GirlVsHeart’. In some ways, it’s a straightforward love song - a track about the thrilling early moments of a new relationship. But it’s also a direct sonic hit that’s ready for the mosh pit. “I had the lyrics and I thought they were so cliché and embarrassing, but Ove said, ‘Lean into the cliché and we’ll make a heavy rock song. The more cliched the lyric, the better’. I thought that was great,” Hilda recalls.
On the Emma-penned ‘Grease Baby’, the band mix fuzzy rock’n’roll guitars with lyrics that teeter between admiration and despair. Written after a summer holiday to Greece, it gives a voice to some of the singer’s darker inner monologues. “I think [comparison] is a repeating theme in my songs. It’s something I think about a lot,” she says. “But I also really love the girl that I’m comparing myself to, and it was a really nice trip in many ways, so I think this song captures both sides of it.”
On the grungey ‘Hello Kitty’, Emma crafts a delightfully visceral image of messy young bedrooms and youthful malaise; of trying to mark your stamp on the walls of a new place. Meanwhile ‘Robot’ is perhaps the most playful track on the record: a tongue in cheek song about falling in love with a machine (“I thought a lot about Bender from Futurama,” Hilda laughs) that sounds like a lost cut from Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Fever To Tell.
There are pared-back moments, such as on the record’s two ballads - Emma’s hazy, closing ‘Unbothered’ and Hilda’s spectral, super lo-fi ‘I Wish I Could Keep It Together’. But more than ever, Clutter have found that the thing that unites their music is its ability to go anywhere. Heavy or soft, light or dark, at Sugar Rush’s heart is the inimitable outlook of the four friends that have made it - not least on their self-titled manifesto of sorts. “‘C.L.U.T.T.E.R’ has a double meaning because it’s our band but it’s also my life - it’s so cluttered in my life,” Hilda smiles. “It’s about partying and not wanting to go home, because when everything is Clutter then everything is right.”
They might still be figuring out adulthood, they might still be testing new parts of their identity, but on Sugar Rush, Clutter have created a statement that’s defiant, daring and all sorts of fun. Why not join in - it’s pretty sweet over here…
