Messed!Up
Swedish band Girl Scout and I go all the way back to the day they released their first ever song online, “Do You Remember Sally Moore?”, in 2022, and went viral in the indie scene directly. And it didn’t take long until the band signed with a management in the UK and started playing support slots across the canal, while people in Sweden still didn’t know much about their rising fame in the indie scene.
A year later, I ran into the band at their first Roskilde Festival gig ever, and another two months later, we sat down with the band at Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg and watched two more shows. Ever since, I’ve been a fan of their well-crafted songs and people-pleasing banter on stage by frontwoman Emma.
Just recently, Girl Scout released their debut album Brink, and on the back of the album, they set off to tour Europe, including a few dates in Germany, and here we were waiting for them to go on stage at Turmzimmer in our hometown Hamburg.
Girl Scout arrive onstage with the kind of quiet confidence that suggests they already know exactly how this is going to go. No grand entrance, no unnecessary theatrics, just a quick glance between bandmates, a count-in, and then everything snaps into place. And it’s a gig dominated by songs off their debut album – “Uh-Huh”, “Same Kids”, “Song 1”, and “Keeper” arrive in a streak before their epic 2023 single “Weirdo” breaks the album’s dominance.
Over the past year, their reputation as a live act has grown in whispers and word-of-mouth superlatives – you have to see them live – and it doesn’t take long to understand why. There’s a momentum to their set that feels deliberate but never forced, where the songs fold into each other as if stopping might break the spell. And they operate on a careful paradox: precision wrapped in looseness. It’s tight enough to appear almost casual while still retaining a punchy, raw gloss that keeps everything alive and slightly unpredictable.
At the centre of it all is Emma Jansson, shifting effortlessly between intimacy and command, and with lots of banter between songs, in some sort of German while having a private conversation with those few Swedes that were at the show (I’m sure the German audience didn’t understand a word). And she also saved a man during the encore who fainted, probably because of too many beers. Musically, the band’s interplay is another recurring strength. Viktor Spasov’s guitar work – equal parts melodic and abrasive – sets the tone for the whole set, while the rhythm section provides a steady backbone that allows the front line to stretch out. The result is a live sound that feels bigger than the sum of its parts: not polished into sterility, but sharpened into impact.
Stand-out tracks tonight were, surprisingly, their Swedish-sung track “Feberdrömmar”, and of course, their massive hit – and first song ever – “Do You Remember Sally Moore?”. And one thing is clear: Girl Scout are already behaving like a band on the cusp of outgrowing small rooms. There’s confidence, intensity, and just enough volatility to keep things dangerous. Keep up the momentum, and we’ll see each other soon again!
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Photographer: Niko Schmuck
