It started like a bit of a love affair. A chance meeting between two sultry leaders of two travelling packs of musicians, stealing glances on the sly at a truck stop somewhere along the Autobahn. A short and shy conversation, sweetly cramped by mutual admiration, and the first ice was broken. Once back home in Stockholm, Sweden, the two continued to run into one another, in clubs and bars, always at night, they were an artful smash-up waiting to happen.
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Adam Olenius, having toured tirelessly around the world with his band Shout Out Louds for years, and Markus Krunegard, a prolific staple of musical Sweden both with his band Laakso and as a solo star, somehow found common grounds in a bit of a longing for unbroken territory. Songs were written here and there, in between tours, over the phone, before and after late outings on the town, and all that was certain was that these two champions in their opposing corners of the ring were equally dead set on teaming up. lt was just a matter of time. That time finally came in the winter of 2010/2011. Olenius and Krunegard picked out a studio where they spent two months compiling the bits and pieces they had accumulated over the past 4 years into a full length album under the name WE ARE SERENADES.
The album Criminal Heaven ended up consisting of 10 songs, all constructed according to the gospel of Markus and Adam. Having spent many a month on the creation of the album it was only natural that quite a few of the songs in their finished form came to represent the coming and going of a season - first international single Come Home being the most barefaced example with its sincere nudge at a Christmas spent away from loved ones. Particularly in songs like Birds and Oceans, another near-religious key element to the band's sound comes into play. A common infatuation with nature, possibly stemming from Markus' roots in the scarce lands of northern Finland and Adam's natively Swedish passion for the great outdoors, is as present in the songs as the obvious love of an anciently ice ridden wall of sound.
Picked up by the legendary once punk, then new wave, then just plain ingenious label Stranded in Sweden, followed by a worldwide deal with similarly prestigious US Interscope label Cherrytree Records (Feist, Robyn etc). We Are Serenades proudly carry on a long tradition of Swedish made, well-crafted, stylish and clever pop music loved by generations of connaisseurs and outsiders alike. Krunegard and Olenius may have spent their musical childhoods each in his own neck of the woods, but for We Are Serenades the future seems to hold plenty of wide open spaces and a world of opportunities to break new territory and preach their credo as one tight unit. And it looks like this one is going to be the type of love affair that stands the tides of time.
