Popfest Highlight of the Week: Suburban Kids With Biblical Names/Springfactory

By Marion Hodges

(Photo credit to Dominick Mastrangelo via Brooklyn Vegan)

It wasn't supposed to happen this way of course.  I was supposed to arrive home from New York very late on that Monday night, go straight to bed, and wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and ready to compose a full report of the NYC Popfest for Web in Front before dashing off to San Francisco the following day for more Popfest fun, and another comprehensive write up for this page.  Surely I should have foreseen that these excellent intentions would inevitably backfire in the most spectacular fashion.

Or maybe not.  I am now more of the opinion that Popfests are not necessarily designed to inspire comprehensive, and/or entirely objective journalism.  At least that wasn't the case for me.  Both Popfest experiences were a complete blur of giddy toasts/excited conversations with new best friends, declarative statements such as, "Oh this is my new favorite band!" (even though you knew you would contradict that statement moments later when you heard your new new favorite band, and overall it was about just having fun.  It was about taking a long weekend out of your life (or for those of us that were very lucky, back to back weekends) where nothing was required to be taken seriously, and everything was there to be enjoyed.  So it's with that mindset that I've decided to publish a list of highlights rather than a complete overview.  And if the feeling only lasts as long as it takes me to write this series of posts, well then at least for that time each performance that I've chosen to highlight here (as well as those to which I will give honorable mention) will remain the best performance by any band, ever.

So with that said, there is no other logical place for me to begin  my Popfest report than with the one two punch of Suburban Kids With Biblical Names/Springfactory who with their combined force (and the fact that both bands played both festivals) remain my festival highlights head and shoulders above anything else that I saw during either weekend.

This remains the case even now, long after the dust from that fantastic experience has officially settled.  Oh sure, since the style of these two bands is quite different, I should probably have more hesitation in allowing them to share space.  However, Springfactory is made up entirely of the exact same members of Suburban Kids With Biblical Names.  Only for Springfactory the keyboardist Lina Cullemark takes that keyboard front and center, and provides lead vocals.  The result is most often of a more straightforward guitar pop variety than SKWBN's electro-heavy party band overtones.  Although Springfactory do flirt with this idea as well.  At one point Cullemark introduced a song with some words to the effect of, "And now we disco?"  And we did, and it was awesome.  The range of talent that resides within this Swedish quintet is very, very impressive.  Not being a musician myself, I have to imagine that the dergree of practice and focus that it would take to make one band sound as good as SKWBN does would have to be pretty high.  So the fact that they are able to take all of that creative energy and create such equally enjoyable, catchy, and finely crafted pop songs with this side project says quite a bit about the individual strength/talent of each person in the band, but also their ability to come up with an endless supply of ways to seamlessly combine every element from the extraordinarily solid rhythm section, to each lead singers lovely vocal stylings and clever lyrics.  Now, Springfactory I only caught in S.F. where they opened the Friday night show.  They also played a Saturday afternoon show in New York which I sadly missed entirely.  Both of those time slots imply a license to play around, experiment, and win over new fans.  Suburban Kids With Biblical Names on the other hand had a more important job to do with their time slots for each festival.  They were the last band to play in New York, and the headlining band for the first night of the San Francisco festival.  They were required to leave the New York crowd with one last snapshot of one of the funnest weekend long parties that we had all surely had in recent memory, and they were then to set the tone for the equally fun party that was to be had in San Francisco.  They succeeded to a somewhat unbelievable degree in both regards.  SKWBN first piqued my attention a few years back when i read about their record # 3 on Three Imaginary Girls based entirely on the fact that they had clearly taken their name from the Silver Jews song ("People") that I was moderately obsessed with at the time.  I purchased the record, and enjoyed it quite a bit, but I don't think that I could have forseen the fact that they would be quite as good as they are live.  The energy never faltered for a second, all of the songs from their new EP # 4 were skillfully debuted to these American audiences including the lead track from that EP, "1999" which is strongly in the running to end up as my favorite song of the year.  Certain songs from # 3 like "Parakit," "Rent a Wreck," and "Loop Duplicate My Heart" took their rightful places as the anthems that they were always meant to be at both shows.  Especially "Loop Duplicate..." which its worth noting was very neatly looped into the track that follows it on the record "Instrumental."  At the show in San Francisco myself, and everyone around me seemed to shout along in unison to the line "I've got no reason for going out tonight, I'm making out tonight, with MY COMPUTER!"  It was one of those oddly reassuring moments where you looked around and were certain that you must be surrounded by the best people in the world, and we probably were.  I saw some incredible performances over the course of these festivals, but none that came close to topping either set from SKWBN, and Springactory by association.

I've found a great video of SKWBN's performance of "Loop Duplicate My Heart" in New York for our first video.  The second video is Springfactory in San Francisco performing a song whose name I can't recall.  If anyone knows please tell us in the comments section!