Viva Sounds is everything a festival should be.
Words: Minty Slater Mearns.
Photos: Donna Lee (KULT Magasin), Elena Perota, Estefânia Silva (Of Silver And Light), Mattias Eliasson.
Now in its seventh year, Gothenburg’s Viva Sounds is a festival all about making connections. By day, there’s a conference for industry folk to get some insight into what the future might look like for festivals, learn the back stories of those working behind the scenes to put shows on and much more, all whilst having plenty of opportunity to make links with each other and musicians on the bill alike.
With a lineup stacked full of goodness from all over the place, it’s impossible to choose who to see, but the best thing about a festival like Viva Sounds is you have the option to stay for full sets or wander a short distance between venues until you hear something that tickles your fancy.
After scoping out the Majorna area for a few hours, Gothenburg natives Mud Grief take to the stage at Hängmattan to really get the evening started. Joining together the best of noise rock, grunge and shoegaze, they get the crowd pumped for the days ahead, with both the lead singer and the bassist ending up in the audience at varying points to really step up the energy levels.
There’s a big link between Canada and Sweden due to their close proximity, so it’s only right to go and see at least one Canadian artist while at Viva Sounds and just as luck would have it, Nyssa is next up at Hängmattan. Appearing with only her bassist, a couple of guitars and a drum machine, she opened her set with a cover of The Stone Roses hit ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ before channelling some of rock and roll’s greatest icons from Bowie to Patti Smith with tracks from her latest record.
Day two starts with a panel exploring the future of festivals, which is a hard listen but an important one. Music for the evening starts with Welsh musician Adjua, who brings all the chill vibes – quite the contrast from Mary Shelley down the road at record store Andra Långgatans Skivhandel. The group appear in hospital scrubs with lead singer Jackson Dockery barefoot in a patient’s gown; he does anything but stay still: clambering on top of neatly filed record stacks, even running out into the street to sing at passersby – it’s the definition of chaos. In amongst all this, though, the group echo points made at the earlier panel about the difficulties of being a musician in the modern day, urging the crowd to buy merch online as it was too expensive to ship it over from the US just for these shows, as well as half-jokingly asking if any representatives from Partisan Records were in the room.
It’s a skip across to Pustervik for Los Bitchos. Unsure of what to expect, their support Faux Real aren’t shy at all. Imagine the synchronised dance routines you and your mate would do as kids for your parents so they’d be allowed to stay for dinner, pair them with a series of infectious pop songs and et voila. Los Bitchos take to the stage, and there isn’t a single moment all evening where you feel alone as an audience member; there’s a palpable sense of joy in the room as the band rattled through their set with highlights being ‘Talkie Talkie Charlie Charlie’, ‘Hi’, La Bomba before finishing with a rousing rendition of The Champs hit ‘Tequila’ during which the members took turns to swig from a bottle of the spirit.
To close out the festival, Saturday night was spent in crowds for various UK-based bands at 2Lång. Having travelled from Burton-on-Trent at 2:30 that morning, Eighty Eight Miles smash their set, even throwing in a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’. Covering any of their songs is a brave decision, but Ellie Grice does have the right voice for it.
The penultimate act on the This Feeling Stage is Good Health Good Wealth, who appear to have brought an entire brigade of family and friends from home to watch them play. Still in his puffer jacket, pint in hand, Bruce Breakey plays the stereotypical British bloke; the music is comparable to that of The Streets circa ‘Original Pirate Material’. The vibe of the room is so great it’s almost easy to forget that it’s the start of winter in a room in Gothenburg and not 1pm in the middle of summer in a damp field somewhere in England.
Ultimately, Viva Sounds is everything a festival should be. They’re paving the way for the industry to become bigger and better at a time when things feel a little uncertain, and it’s exactly the kind of energy that’s needed the world over.
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