Detektivbyrån find the clues to tickle my fancy

What a nice venue, the amphitheater at Monbijoufestspiele!

Last night a little more than 100 of us sat sprawled out there on risers made of fresh-smelling pine as we watched and listened to Detektivbyrån out of Gothenburg, Sweden. The scene was a real wonder, what with the shiny dome of the newly renovated Bode Museum in the background; dozens of potted plants set up behind the band; and the natural flora that towered over the theater, including a Japanese maple that seemed to “get” the trio as it clicked its leaves together in time while the group did their thing.

Their thing is a peculiar combination of, in their words,  “glockenspiel ‘n’ accordion on top of fuzzy beats, swinging hugs and sweet respect.” Yes, I know, not the kind of hard driving power rock that makes a nice soundtrack for war. Nor is it the shoe-gazing emo that so many of the German kids seem to be listening to when they’re not blasting tedious Aggro hip-hop out of their cell phones. Instead, Detektivbyrån use their instruments to emit an ethereal feeling that’s at once contemporary and playful and magical, and with their bodies they portray the weirdest melange of hip geekiness. The accordion player, the poetically named Anders Flanders, seems to wobble on chopstick legs as he pushes out bass notes on his squeezebox with one hand and tinkles on an electric keyboard with the other. His Joey Ramone haircut and impossibly tight black jeans are perhaps the only indications that the band’s roots are primed in punk. Well, that and the fact that at one point he announced something like:  “When we were a punk band, our friends could never understand what we were singing.”

His pal, messy-haired Martin Molin, struck the bars on his vibraphone and glockenspiel with a panache that would’ve made the likes of Bobby Hutcherson smile, but the sounds that came out were decidedly anti-jazz inasmuch as they didn’t swing, but instead hung onto the wafts of cool Berlin air. These are the kinds of notes that would no doubt please Wes Anderson’s go-to composer Mark Mothersbaugh (née Mr. Devo) or maybe fans of the Icelandic group Múm. They are the kind of notes that were perfect for this particular outdoor venue. But wait, jeez, don’t think that I’ve forgotten about the drummer who is so singular that his parents gave him four names (Jons Nils Emmanuel Ekström). In fact, his combination of acoustic and electric drums gave the impression of a full rhythm section that was at times so bumpin’ he had me wishing that there was an appropriate place to shake my ass. Sadly, there wasn’t. JNE Ekström even managed, by the way, to play an amplified set of scissors with such precision that they must have been made by Fiskars.

I have no doubt that some famous Scandinavian pixie singer like Bjork will be calling these boys for a project someday soon, and you can bet that after their first full-length LP, Wermland, comes out in September, some DJ with slick fingers will remix Detektivbyrån right onto the desk of a not-quite-good looking New York City publicist (trust me, they’re all like this) who will make sure that the band only plays packed clubs and festivals for the rest of their career. If you have the chance to see them before that happens, please do.

By the way, the greatest thing of all for me was that I finally attended a show at a small Berlin venue without feeling like I’d been jammed into a Tokyo subway car. For once, I found it unnecessary to fight off the aggressive concert atmosphere using the fake dance-fighting Capoeira moves I’ve absorbed from the past few Karneval der Kulturen. Add to that the fact that, aside from the occasional burst of unintentional fuzz and feedback from what I guess was a wonky cable, the sound was remarkable for an outdoor arena. It might be too late to see Detektivbyrån play there again, but I suggest that you try to stop by sometime. Even if the music’s not to your liking, I’m sure the theater will be.