Interview with Wholesome: ‘It evolved from an ugly duckling to the title track of the EP!’

Hailing from the land of the Viking Kings, Norwegian jangly rock band Wholesome have released a new EP ‘Garden’ evoking nostalgic summer days.

The band comprises Jørgen Johannessen (vocals/guitar), Johan Nes (drummer and producer), Georg Yrke (guitar/vocals), his younger brother Sigurd (keys) and Jon Olav Hausken (bass). ‘We’re all from the same place, a small place on the west coast – Karmøy – and we’ve all played in bands before,’ Johannessen said. Of their band name, Nes says: ‘We thought it was in the wind (laughs), everywhere you saw ‘wholesome’ in memes and in popular culture.’ Johannessen jumps in; ‘I looked it up and there wasn’t another band called that. We were lucky to get it, I was shocked no-one had taken it!’

‘Garden’ consists of five tracks and two interludes, all themed around nature, as the title suggests: ‘We take inspiration from a lot of different bands, garage rock revival like The Strokes and The Wombats but what we’ve done is more soft,’ Nes said. ‘We used a lot of acoustic guitar on the EP, it’s airy.’ The title track itself opens with a jangly burst of guitars, and is summer personified: ‘It’s the first or second song we ever made,’ Johannessen said. ‘We always struggled to put it somewhere, we had the “da da” guitar hook. It evolved from an ugly duckling to the title track of the EP!’

‘It’s as if you’re walking through a garden and come across these animals’

However, unusually, the track is written from the perspective of a snail, which is also reflected in the artwork: ‘It’s a bit weird,’ Nes said laughing. ‘There are a lot of animal references on the EP, we also wrote about cats and dogs. That’s why we called it ‘Garden’, it’s as if you’re walking through a garden and come across these animals.’ In the track, there is also a snippet of an old voice from what appears to be a documentary about snails and I ask where it is from: ‘I just googled “1950’s snail documentary”,’ Johannessen said. Nes nods: ‘We had this psychedelic part in the song that was empty, so when Johan found the clip, we just used that. The chorus part, we had that from our guitarist Georg, he had the riff and we had the line “This is where I belong, in this garden”.’

‘Cat Song’ has a similar heady, nostalgic feel, which is amplified by Yrke using a Fender Jaguar going into a Benson Preamp, then into a Strymon Flint before leaving the amplifier, a vintage black face Fender Super Reverb: ‘That also started with a guitar riff that Georg had,’ Nes said. ‘He brought it to band practice and we started jamming together. I produced the EP, I mixed and worked on it afterwards, I put a lot of cat noises on it (laughs). That interlude where Jørgen talks to the cat, that was made up on the spot! He recorded it on his phone and sent it to me. I had to make the miaowing worse to make it fit!’ Johannessen interjects: ‘It’s good in a weird way!’

‘I had the “sitting in the sunshine” parts but didn’t know where I was going to take it’

Johannessen, Nes and Yrke are the main songwriters in the band: ”Dog Days’, that was a day Jørgen wrote the whole song on the guitar and brought it to the rehearsal room,’ Nes said. “Bees’ (the EP closer) I wrote originally on the guitar and took it to the studio. We didn’t release it as a single but we thought it was such a summer song that we had to put it on the album. We play it at the end of our set, we stop at the bridge and get the crowd to sing along. If we could have opened with it and played it again, we would (laughs), we like to play with it. It was the last song to be written. We’d already decided that the concept was going to be nature. I had the “sitting in the sunshine” parts but didn’t know where I was going to take it and Jørgen came up with the bees.’

For me, ‘Dog Days’ is the track that really allows Johannessen’s vocals to shine, transporting you back to idyllic, endless summer days as soon as the track kicks off. However, the upbeat melody sits in contrast to the lyrics that are often decidedly less sunny: ‘I used to work as a process technician in an aluminium plant, doing 12 hour shifts over three days at the weekend,’ Johannessen said. ‘The first verse is about Friday, the second verse about Saturday and the third is Sunday, when I finished. My mother told me the concept of the ‘Dog Days’, the 12 days of sunny weather before the storms. The song is about work and wanting to just have fun with our pals. There are only around 41,000 people where we live – when it’s summer, you want to take advantage of it. When you live in Norway, you forget to appreciate it. We have mountains where we come from and it rains a lot – we think about that, it irritates us (laughs). Johannessen laughs: ‘We come from the land of the Viking kings!’

Their video for it encapsulates that summer festival feeling: ‘In the summer, we had a festival gig on the east coast of Norway,’ Johannessen said. ‘It was like an eight hour drive. In 2004, I got a Sony handheld camera, I brought it with me on this trip and we filmed each other in each other’s faces (laughs) and we have clips from the concert.’

However, it is not just the history of the Vikings or Viking museums that their hometown is famous for: ‘There’s a hotdog stand in my home town, you have to visit it,’ Johannessen said enthusiastically. ‘It’s really good, it used to be really cheap, it’s not really cheap any more.’ Nes jumps in: ‘The hot dogs are actually famous, I have talked to people who have travelled hours to eat them! People call the stand ‘Kanutta Pølse‘ – ‘pølse’ means hotdog in Norwegian.’

‘We’ve started to work on a lot of new music, it sounds like The Strokes, The Wombats and The Killers, it’s more rocky and guitar-driven’

Wholesome formed in 2018 and bring a lot of eclectic influences to the band. Nes is a fan of Boy Pablo, the indie pop music project of Chilean–Norwegian singer songwriter Nicolas Muñoz, as well as fellow Norwegian Sondre Lerche. Johannessen cites Norwegian folk singer Thomas Dybdahl: ‘He’s like pretty melodic folk, some of it is very orchestral, some songs are just the acoustic guitar. On his 2020 album (Fever), which he made in lockdown, he recorded all the guitars on old tape recorders, it was pretty cool.’

Equally cool is the serious pieces of kit they have on their dream musical shopping lists: Johannessen would love a blue floral Telecaster: ‘I was a huge  fan of The Wombats when I was younger, and Murph (the guitarist) always used a blue floral Telecaster on the first two albums and made it his trademark,’ he said. ‘A couple of years ago, there was a Japanese one for sale in Norway for a thousand bucks, but I felt like I couldn’t afford it – it’s still one of my biggest gear regrets!’ Sigurd Yrke tells me afterwards that he’d love a Roland Juno 60 synthesizer, ‘because it makes cool sounds’. His brother Georg would love ‘any type of Collings guitar (US) or Strand Guitars (Norway): ‘I want to try a Prisma guitar from the US, they have a cool vibe going! I regret not bringing a 1960’s ES 125 Gibson from Austin to Norway when I lived in Texas last year. There’s a whole different vintage scene in the US!’ Hausken has other ideas: ‘I don’t know if I have to say anything bass-related, but I actually define myself as a guitarist! But I would love a Shortscale Fender. Or a Sherwood Green Gibson ES 335.’

Wholesome have been critically acclaimed for their singles leading up to the EP on national radio and have recently been awarded the prize for the most promising band in their region. Their upcoming music will take them back to their rockier roots, according to Nes: ‘We have a lot of influences! We’ve started to work on a lot of new music, it sounds like The Strokes, The Wombats and The Killers, it’s more rocky and guitar-driven. It sounds more like our other songs ‘It Started With You’ and ‘I Really Miss You’,’ he said. Johannessen agrees: ‘I’m a huge Wombats fan but for our ‘Garden’ EP, I was more inspired by bands like Dayglo and Wallows.’

If they could go for a drink with anyone, Nes picks The Killers’ frontman Brandon Flowers: ‘I’d ask him: “How did you do it?!” Johannessen has other plans: ‘I think I would pick Thomas Dybdahl or Tønes. I’d ask about their guitar sound, how did you make it sound like that? I’d ask techie stuff (laughs), and where did they get the inspiration from to write the lyrics?’

‘It’s motivating to know that there are others feeling the same as me’

Lyrics are something that fascinate them, with Nes citing ‘Waiting For My Time To Come’ by Colony House as the song containing his favourite lyric: ‘It says: “Is this the end of this dream I lost or just an introduction to how much it may cost?” It’s my favourite lyric because I recognise myself in it. The struggle of trying to make a living as a musician. It’s motivating to know that there are others feeling the same as me. Also, the line ends on a hopeful note that it may work out in the end, even though it may cost a lot.’

Johannessen quotes John Mayer’s “Walt Grace’s Submarine Test, January 1967”: It’s just touching on another level for me,’ he said. ‘The whole song is great, but I love the last verse: “One evening, when weeks had passed since he’s leaving, the call she planned on receiving, finally made it home. She accepted, the news she never expected, the operator connected, the call from Tokyo.” It’s a song about a guy basically making a submarine in his garage out of junk. His friends all laugh at him when he sets out to try and sail across the sea in the sub, but he proves them all wrong and calls his girl all the way from Tokyo, when she’s already guessing he has given up or died in the attempt. It’s a fantastic song about believing in yourself, and that anything you set out to do is achievable.’

Their dream line ups would be brilliantly eclectic, with Nes picking themselves, Colony House, The Beatles and The Killers. ‘I think I’d have a mashup of a lot of different genres!,’ Johannessen said. ‘The Strokes: I have yet to see them, and they play a big role in my own journey in music. Julian Casablancas is definitely my biggest idol, vocals-wise. Mastodon are probably my favourite heavy metal band. Also a band I’ve never seen live, and I think it would be absolutely killer! My biggest dream as a guitarist is to shred like Brent Hinds (Mastodon’s lead guitarist) but at this rate I doubt I’ll be that good in that genre anytime soon! SKAAR: We shared a gig with SKAAR last December, but she had a very limited band, with two guys supporting her with guitar and pedal steel, but it was still absolutely angelic. I would love to see her with a full band. Sundrowned are also a fellow Karmøy band, who do something close to melodic death metal, a bit similar to Cult of Luna. I’ve seen them before a couple of times, but they just do something to me. The music is actually really soothing and meditative, even though the singer, Jone, sounds like an absolute demon – in a good way! I wouldn’t want to miss playing alongside these titans! Of course I would put us in here. With these artists, there would probably be a lot of people going and I absolutely love playing in front of a big crowd!’

(Top photo from left to right: Georg, Jon Olav, Sigurd, Jørgen and Johan.)