There’s no handbook for your mid-to-late twenties. Who you are, what you want and where you should be by now are mysteries that you can only assume everyone else has the answers to while you stumble around like an idiot. For twin sisters Inez (vocals/guitar) and Ella Johansson (vocals/keys/drum machine) of 7ebra, it can feel like trying to land a plane with no instructions: you grasp for the right controls and hope you don’t crash the whole thing. It’s a feeling captured across the Malmö duo’s second album, How to Land a Plane. Atop their hookiest and most layered songwriting so far, they chew over the insecurities, frustrations and embarrassments of this stage of life. “It’s about feeling a bit messy, and not getting it right. Having a struggle just existing with yourself,” Inez says.
Growing up in a musical household in Malmö, Inez and Ella pursued their own musical paths, keen to keep their identities separate. “When you’re growing up [as twins], you want your own personality sometimes. It feels like you’re clumped together,” Inez says. 7ebra began as a bedroom solo project of Inez’s; but when she was asked by producer Tore Johansson (The Cardigans, Franz Ferdinand) to play her first show at Tambourine Studios in Malmö, she brought Ella on board for musical backup. The sisters soon found that they worked well together, sibling bickering aside. “If I were to write with someone else, it would feel very scary to me,” Inez says. “We’re not afraid to say if we don’t like something — it’s very open.”
The duo went on to record their 2023 debut album, Bird Hour, with Tore. It was released to attention from the likes of Pitchfork and DIY Magazine and a victorious touring cycle including trips to the UK, US and Japan, appearances at End of the Road Festival and SXSW, and support slots for the likes of Paolo Nutini and Arab Strap. The sisters finished the cycle with a newfound confidence in their music. But when trying to write for a new record, they found themselves in a slump. “I feel like Inez especially felt a lot of pressure,” Ella says. Inez agrees: “I was very stuck, and you can’t really write if you’re not living in the world.” It changed when she got a job as a cemetery groundskeeper, ending a long spell of unemployment. “It’s a very slow job, so you think a lot, and that’s when I started to write again,” she says.
