Ultimately, great art is born out of uncontainable expression—it’s created because the artist has no choice but to create it. Great art wills itself into existence, whether the artist even wants it to exist.
Very little great art is born out of boredom, of feeling anonymous and complacent. Copenhagen songwriter Søren Løkke Juul learned this lesson the hard way: After twiddling his thumbs for over a decade as a backing singer and keyboardist in a string of Danish electronic and folk bands, he decided to venture out on his own as Indians.
“In a way, I always wanted to do my own things,” Juul says, “but I don’t think I’ve been ready before now, and the time wasn’t there to do it. But in the last band I was in, I really started feeling too secure in a way—going on-stage and being in the background, doing my keyboard parts and backing vocals. In a way, it was too secure. In a way, I started to get a little bit bored—I didn’t feel anything. It was more of a job going on-stage; I didn’t feel that much. So I wanted to challenge myself a little more doing this.”
That challenge proved both inspirational and financially viable, and it happened pretty damn quickly: The first track he posted online, the haunting electro-lullaby “Magic Kids,” exploded in early 2012 via the usual indie-blog circuit, and before long, he received a call from British record label 4AD, who signed the newly solo songwriter, despite the fact that he didn’t have any other music.
“It was a big pressure because when 4AD contacted me, I basically only had one song,” Juul says. “They asked me if I could write some more, and of course, it was a big inspiration that 4AD wanted to hear more. But it was a really big pressure too, but I just had to lay that behind me because you can’t be creative under pressure. So I just had to find myself in the right position where I could be creative and not afraid of not accomplishing it. So basically what I did was write one song at a time, and all the songs on the record, those are the songs I made. I didn’t make any spare songs. I started writing songs, and the day after I finished writing it, I started a new one. The whole album was written in 2012, and I just had to write the song and produce. Whenever I start a song, I usually just finishing mixing it and recording all the instruments. When I feel it’s done, I’ll start from scratch with a new song.”
Juul describes his debut studio album, Somewhere Else, as “a mix of all I’ve been playing in the last ten years.” From the frosty synth-singalong opener “New” to the glitchy electronic pulses of “Lips Lips Lips” to the falsetto-fueled freak-folk of “I Am Haunted,” these 10 tracks do subtly manage to cover a lot of ground, but they’re all glued together by Juul’s lovely tenor, his judicious approach to arrangements, and an almost child-like lyrical approach.