by LORRAINE CARPENTER

If you’re like me, Aqua’s invasive techno-pop hit “Barbie Girl” is a distasteful memory, but one that’s safely locked away in the brain’s mid-to-late-’90s junk pile, alongside Ally McBeal and JoJo Savard. But for the unlucky populace of Denmark, “Barbie Girl” was as ubiquitous as Celine Dion’s Titanic song and Eric Lapointe’s Obsession singles were here, combined. And things were even bleaker in the Danish rock scene.

“It was that post-grunge thing, bands sounding like Nirvana and Pearl Jam,” says Figurines singer Christian Hjelm. “I remember those days—it was horrible. You really felt like, ‘We gotta change this someday.’”

Figurines were only in their mid-teens at the time, although they had already put together an album of early recordings, originals and covers compiled by Hjelm’s bandmates as a welcome-home gift when he returned from a year in the U.S. Hjelm, Andreas Toft, Claus Salling Johansen and Kristian Volden were actually fans of Nirvana and Pearl Jam in their heyday—though their appreciation didn’t extend to the Danish clones—but once they saw the video for Pavement’s “Gold Soundz,” grunge was over and the Figurines had a direction.

“Indie rock wasn’t really going on where we came from,” Hjelm explains. “There weren’t any other bands playing that kind of music. Not that we felt alone or anything, but we didn’t even think about playing concerts. We just played our songs in our rehearsal room.”

Eventually, in 2001, they were granted a gig in their hometown in northern Denmark, Aalborg. After the show, someone Hjelm describes as “a guy who hung around in Aalborg doing creative things” approached them with an offer to record their music.

“I guess we were just in a situation where we needed somebody to tell us, ‘Hey, you gotta record this,’” Hjelm recalls. “So we made an EP called The Detour, and from that day, [the band] became more serious ’cause Morningside Records eventually, by accident, heard that CD, and a month later, we signed with them.”

Shake a Mountain, their debut album, came out in 2003, and its follow-up, Skeleton, in the spring of 2005. Released more recently in parts of Europe by Germany’s Pop-U-Loud, and in North America by the Control Group, the record has made waves on both sides of the Atlantic, winning accolades from the likes of Pitchfork, and reaching the top of the alternative charts in Denmark, where Figurines are in heavy rotation on national radio.

The band got to where they are now on the strength of their jangly, pop-addled brand of indie rock, which garners frequent comparisons to Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, even the Strokes—in Denmark, critics say they sound American. But Danish music is hot right now, in Denmark and around the world, making it easier for all manner of bands to get ahead, whether they’ve been toiling away for a decade, like Figurines and Under Byen, or they’ve yet to get that first gig.

“It’s easier for young people today to start a band and get a gig, ’cause right now, there’s so much focus on bands here in Denmark,” says Hjelm. “And all the bands that are, in my opinion, very good right now, very cool, we all know each other. It’s like a big rat’s nest.”

With Five Blank Pages at Main Hall on
Saturday, Oct. 21, 8:30 p.m., $12

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