Quiet Riot

Norway’s Kings of Convenience keep turning down the volume

by Stephen Slaybaugh

When Bergen, Norway’s Kings of Convenience released Quiet Is the New Loud in 2001, the band was attempting to be vaguely prophetic, but they didn’t realize how dead-on they would be in launching their career.

The duo, Eirik Bøe and Erlend Øye, had previously released a couple of EPs, which were collected with additional songs for a limited release on American indie label Kindercore. (A good portion of those songs would be included on Quiet.) But their new album turned ears, with the British press latching onto the title phrase to describe what they saw as a new wave of European artists turning down the volume.

The band had created an endearingly hushed record filled with lightly played acoustic guitars and a rapturous intertwining of their voices. The Kings also sparked a new interest their homeland, with other Norwegian artists like Röyksopp (a frequent collaborator with the Kings) and Sondre Lerche garnering attention as a result.

In the intervening years, the band released Versus, an album of Quiet songs remixed by friends. Øye put out a couple of electronic records, moved to Berlin and toured on his own as deejay, while Bøe continued his psychology studies in Bergen.

The two finally reconvened and released a follow-up, Riot on an Empty Street (Astralwerks), one of last year’s best records. The album is everything its predecessor was and more, with new instruments and new influences (like some Joao Gilberto-style bossa nova) added to their delicate mix.

The Kings of Convenience are currently on their most extensive tour of the States yet. I spoke with Eirik Bøe last week on the phone from Washington, D.C.

There are obviously more instruments on the album than just the two of you can play. Did you bring anybody with you for the tour?

We’re playing our show version of the songs, which is two guitars and two voices and that’s it. And a piano. We argue over who’s going to play the piano, so we change instruments.

Do you find it difficult playing such quiet music in a rock club setting?

No, people who come to our shows are extremely quiet. It’s very easy for us now, but four or five years ago we struggled because people didn’t know what to expect and they were noisy. Now it’s not a problem anymore. We have really good crowds.

Have people come to your shows as a result of the remix album or Erlend’s dance albums expecting something different?

We got booked once at an electronic music festival in Portugal. They wanted us to headline the festival, and I don’t think they realized that Versus was just a remix release. So we were on the main stage at 10 o’clock in the evening and there were dance tents all around in the festival area, and we were on the main stage with two guitars. So that was a bizarre experience. But it worked. I think that our performances are a lot about communication between us and the audience. So it works, even though we can’t make a lot of noise.

I read in an interview that you were disappointed with the record.

That was Erlend’s statement and I disagreed. On this record, we had a lot of arguments in the studio. Erlend lives in Berlin and I live in Norway and we recorded the album in Norway, and I was in the studio for a month after Erlend had left, working on final mixes. So in the end, it became a little more like what I wanted it to be and less of what Erlend wanted, and I guess that’s where that resentment comes from.

You’re involved in psychology. Do you see that as coming out in the music at all?

I’m sure it must because I’ve been studying psychology for six years. It does affect the way I think and, in that sense, I’m sure it somehow affects my songwriting, but it’s hard to point out exactly how. I can’t really say.

It seems like on Riot on an Empty Street, in comparison to Quiet Is the New Loud, everything is a bit more pronounced and the voices especially are further up in the mix. Is that a sign of feeling more confident this time around?

It’s funny that you say that because we were in a radio studio in Atlanta the other day and they were playing Quiet Is the New Loud, and I was listening—I hadn’t heard it in a long time—and to me it sounded a little hesitant in the way that we were singing. I realized that we’ve gone through a development of becoming more confident singers, and that’s something you can hear on the new record.

The press ended up using the title of your first record as a catchphrase for anything that wasn’t balls-out rock. Did that surprise you?

We knew it was a catchy title. We were expecting journalists to pick up on that title, but I wasn’t expecting the amount of attention that we got for our first record. Particularly in Norway and the U.K., we did so many interviews, it was a shock for me. This album has had a more healthy life, not a massive amount of attention, but a steady growth of the number of people listening to our music.

Any plans to do a remix version of this album or something similar to Versus?

We haven’t made any plans right now. There are remixes being made of a few different tracks. The reason we put out Versus was that we had a lot of friends who were working with electronic music and we wanted to work together and help them out, and the remixes turned out so great we wanted to make an album of it. But it probably won’t happen this time.

Does it feel like there’s a healthy music community in Bergen, with people feeding off one another?

Yeah, it’s really a good place for music. I can’t really explain why. It’s got music historical roots. Music has always been important in Bergen, but at the same time there’s no music industry in Bergen; the music industry is in Oslo, which is an eight-hour drive away, so Bergen’s far from the mainstream music business. But I think that’s good conditions for making music.

Are you committed to staying within this style or could we expect something surprising from you in the future?

I think both Erlend and I agree that Kings of Convenience is about acoustic pop music, and there’s no reason to change that. I find that a lot of bands have this idea that they have to change their sound whenever they make a new album. It’s a really weird idea because if people like what you do, you should keep doing that. I can’t understand this crazy idea that some bands have that, “Oh, we have to become a new band this time because we have a new album.” Bands are so afraid of being perceived as…

Repeating themselves.

Yeah, repeating themselves. But I’m not worried about that. For us, it’s always been about the songwriting. That’s our main focus, and that’s what we’re going to keep doing. And the idea of making acoustic pop music, there’s a lot more work to be done there.

Kings of Convenience will play an early show at Little Brother’s on Sunday, February 20. Click to kingsofconvenience.com for info.

February 16, 2005