The Radio Dept.

Emerging from Sweden in the early years of the 2000s, The Radio Dept. ranked among the more prominent shoegaze-influenced indie rock acts, attracting notice from dedicated followers thanks to the strong critical reception of their debut album, Lesser Matters. While still in high school in Lund, Sweden, Elin Almered and Johan Duncanson created an initial version of the band in 1995 and took its name from a gas station called Radioavdelningen. The pair dissolved the project almost immediately after settling on that name, yet Duncanson brought the group back three years later by joining forces with Martin Larsson. The lineup expanded in 2001 when bassist Lisa Carlberg, drummer Per Blomgren, and keyboardist Daniel Tjader joined, at which point momentum began to build. A demo submitted to Sonic magazine earned placement on one of the publication’s CD samplers, prompting Swedish indie powerhouse Labrador to sign the band after encountering the material; two years later the full-length Lesser Matters appeared, by which time Blomgren had departed on friendly terms. Both that album and the band’s follow-up Labrador release, the 2005 EP Pulling Our Weight, gained broader exposure once Sofia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette incorporated the tracks “Keen on Boys,” “Pulling Our Weight,” and “I Don’t Like It Like This.”

Soon after Pulling Our Weight came out, Carlberg exited and the remaining members chose not to replace the bassist, instead relying on a drum machine for the subsequent record. On the 2006 album Pet Grief, Duncanson and Larsson moved away from the guitar-centric approach of their debut and explored synth-pop textures reminiscent of the Pet Shop Boys. Limited touring and other circumstances meant Pet Grief sold fewer copies than its predecessor and drew scant notice from major outlets. The group took an extended period to prepare new material, finally issuing the single “Freddie and the Trojan Horse” in summer 2008. Further postponements kept anything else from surfacing until the following summer, when the single “David” arrived; the album long rumored to be complete by late 2008, Clinging to a Scheme, was at last released in April 2010.

Later that year The Radio Dept. issued the single “The New Improved Hypocrisy,” which made their political stance explicit. January 2011 brought the compilation Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002–2010, gathering every A-side, numerous B-sides, and several rarities. That same year the band received a Swedish Grammis nomination for Band of the Year while Clinging to a Scheme was shortlisted for Album of the Year, underscoring the esteem they had earned at home even though neither award was won. A lengthy tour across North America, Latin America, and Asia followed, after which activity paused until the 2014 single “Death to Fascism.”

During the intervening years the band grew dissatisfied with their agreements involving Labrador Records and their publishers, ultimately filing suit against both parties; work on a new shoegaze-oriented album stalled as a result. After losing the case the remaining duo of Duncanson and Larsson shifted direction toward dance-oriented material. They first put out the 2015 singles “Occupied” and “This Repeated Sodomy,” then performed at Coachella. As part of the settlement they owed Labrador one additional album and fulfilled the obligation with the politically charged Running Out of Love in late 2016. The following summer they released the EP Teach Me to Forget, which mixed remixes with several new songs.