Catching up with First Aid Kit means recalibrating expectations. Yes, there are electric guitars now. Yes, the live show hits harder. No, none of it arrived with a manifesto attached. “We don’t really ever go into the studio having a concept,” says Johanna Söderberg. “It’s based on whatever the song needs.”
That practical instinct explains why the shift feels natural rather than forced. Johanna’s playing more electric guitar. Klara Söderberg has picked up bass. “The live show just feels a little different,” Klara says. “We can play together more in a different way… move around, both of us. It’s been really fun.” The key word there is fun—not reinvention, not growth-for-growth’s-sake, just two sisters finding a new physical language onstage.
None of that changed how the songs were born. “All the songs are written on just an acoustic guitar and vocals,” Johanna explains. “They all work like that in their simplest form.” The decisions come later, once the bones are set. This time, those decisions led them to Tucker Martine, a producer they admire without reservation. “He’s such an incredible producer and person,” Johanna says. “He creates these beautiful sonic landscapes.” Martine also assembled the band they recorded with, turning the sessions into something communal and immediate. “It was such an honor to get to work with him.”
Before the studio, though, came five weeks in Los Angeles—just the two of them, renting a house and writing every day. Not a cabin in the woods. Not isolation as performance. “We wanted to go someplace just the two of us,” Johanna says. LA worked because it offered distance without disappearance. “I had been going through some tough times personally,” she adds. “It was good to go away from where I’d been and get some perspective. That was great for the songwriting.”
That perspective shows up in the emotional core of the record, especially on the single “It’s a Shame.” The language around it—emptiness, desperation—sounds bleak on paper, but Johanna frames it plainly. “It was written from that perspective of being alone all of a sudden,” she says. “Not really knowing what to do with yourself. Wanting someone to give you some validation.” She laughs at how naked that sounds. “Sometimes we all are desperate.”
The response surprised her. “Seeing people’s comments was so heartwarming,” she says. “People really got it. They were either in that situation or had been there.” Sharing the song, she says, “kind of helped cure the loneliness a little bit. You feel like we’re all in this together.”
That sense of togetherness took a sharper form earlier, with “You Are the Problem Here,” a song that arrived angry and stayed that way. “We knew it had to be different,” Johanna says. “It couldn’t be a country song. It needed to be punk.” Written in a moment of fury, it became something larger as the world caught up to it. “It’s such a cathartic song to sing live,” she says, especially as young women shout every word back. “It feels like we’re taking some power back.”
Power, loneliness, anger—these aren’t aesthetic choices for First Aid Kit. They’re lived conditions, translated into melody. “If there’s any way we can help people feel less lonely,” Klara says, “that’s a great thing.”
Ten years in, electric guitars humming, that mission hasn’t changed. The volume just got turned up.
Listen to the interview above and then check out "It's A Shame" below!
And an earlier interview:
