Interview with The Blue Van’s Steffen Westmark

Coming off their latest album, Man Up, Denmark’s The Blue Van have been touring and promoting their music to make a mark in the U.S. After winning Knox Road’s coveted Most Promising Band at Siren 2009 award, frontman Steffen Westmark answered my burning questions about breaking the U.S. scene, going nuts onstage and escaping […]

The Blue Van @ Siren

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I won’t spend time beating around the bush on this one, guys: all of us at KR agree that The Blue Van is going to be huge, and I mean huge like Lars Von Trier‘s ego is huge. (Suck on that obscure reference, hipsters! Haha!) Their music is beginning to make the rounds as we speak, appearing on television shows and commercials. It’s about damn time, too, if lead singer Steffen Westmark is to be believed. Lee got to speak to him for a bit and found out that they’ve been doing this for no less than twelve years now.

About time for a big break stateside, no?

The band’s live show will definitely help matters. I went into the band’s early show without any real expectations, and was thoroughly blown away. Both the music and the show itself is rock ‘n’ roll all the way through: high, wailing guitar solos and muscular choruses aside, the band’s stage presence was commanding throughout the set. Keyboardist Søren Christensen was particularly exciting, doing all sorts of unnecessary-but-awesome things, many of which involved picking up or tilting his instrument on its axis.

But what a great, energizing early day performance The Blue Van was. Keep a lookout, everyone. Denmark’s gonna be be the new Iceland, let me tell ya.

The Blue Van – “Man Up” [MP3]

The Blue Van – “Silly Boy” [MP3]

More photos after the jump.

Continue reading The Blue Van @ Siren

[MP3s] Your Siren Music Festival Preview

It’s Thursday, so that means the bestest, hippest, most free music festival of the summer is about to kick off. For those of you at Under A Rock University where you major in not knowing things (zinger!!), the Siren Music Festival is a one-day, two-stage, free show at Coney Island, NY. Home of […]