THE RADIO DEPT. [OPENING CONCERT]

By most conventional measures, The Radio Dept. should never have become this successful. They built a devoted international following, landed three songs in Sofia Coppola’s "Marie Antoinette" and inspired critics to reach for superlatives while seemingly doing everything in their power to avoid playing the music industry’s game. Since forming in Lund more than two decades ago, Johan Duncanson and Martin Carlberg have approached their career with an almost heroic disregard for deadlines, expectations and conventional ideas of success – perfectionists whose fierce independence has occasionally made them their own worst enemies. Perhaps they have been able to get away with it for one simple reason: the music is simply too good to ignore. Through hazy electronics, reverb-soaked guitars, battered drum machines and softly sung vocals, The Radio Dept. have created some of Swedish indie pop’s most luminous melodies, balancing dreamlike beauty, melancholy, dub and dance-pop influences with an immovable political conviction. Their live performances are famously rare, which makes seeing them inside an abandoned monument to consumer culture feel particularly appropriate.