The Wonder Boys
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rough translation:

All styles at once

In front of you, two jack-in-the-box boxes.
   Turn the handle of the first one, and for yes men with painted smiles appear, proclaiming “we are a quartet, we play rock and we release an album every two years”. Turn the handle of the other one, and everything explodes; limiting genre definitions and band formats turns into a confetti rain of nuances. Creative lows and restraints fly up in the sky, never to return.
   The Wonder Boys live in that second box.
   The Wonder Boys is a many-headed and extraordinarily fantastic constellation, whose hub consists of the Stockholm-, Lund- and Skived-based multi-instrumentalists David Liljemark (also known as comics artist), Christian Kastén (also known as Caroline Soul’s bass player) and Christian “Gröt” Gustavsson (also known as studio maestro).

An abundance of releases, a myriad of songs in a lot of different styles. David, how would you recommend a beginner to enter The Wonder Boys’ world?
   -If you prefer the early years’ pig-distorted lo-fi-sound, you can start with the collection cd “0,000 001 Million Wonder Boys Fans Can’t Be Wrong” from 2001. Otherwise, our latest full length releases – last year’s “Die grosse Schlagerparade” and recently released “Passion & Compassion” – are more varied hit parades.
   -The gist of it is of course that you should have everything.

And when should one listen to The Wonder Boys?
   -There’s a song for every occasion. For potatoe eating, shopping sprees, being frost-bitten, the tsunami, the day before Christmas, self mutilation and letter writing, romance and being in love, breaking up and being down in the dumps – maybe the latter in particular. But maybe not so many songs for having sex though. It would feel like someone had fun at our expence.

Johan Jacobsson

The Wonder Boys are at
www.geocities.com/iwannadieonstage

Photo: Åsa Grennvall.
Picture byline: David has green fingers, but is ashamed of them.

From Sonic #29, june 2006.