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Entertainment | 3/22/2005
Kings of Convenience reveal
Euro sadness
By Kevin Greenberg
"It's
meant to be an ironic comment on modern society," Erlend Oye says of
the name of his band, Kings of Convenience. Things today tend to be
made cheaply and not to last, he adds, whether it's a song cobbled
together in ProTools or a building hastily assembled by the
lowest-bidding architectural office.
Kings of
Convenience
seeks to avoid such quick fixes. Together with Erik Glambek Boe, Oye
has spent the last several years crafting three considered albums of
hushed, impressionistic folk songs that strive to embody a timeless
quality.
"One of the main
values of our music is that we're
thinking what the album will sound like the 10th time you listen to it,
not just the first," Oye notes, brushing his shaggy reddish hair back
from his enormous spectacles with a bony hand.
The Kings'
music, while informed by the uniquely American singer-songwriter
tradition responsible for spawning greats such as Simon and Garfunkel,
nonetheless has its own dark sparkle - a kind of briny, European
sadness. There's an intangible complexity bubbling below the surface,
perhaps born of the range of sounds that influence the duo's music.
Maybe
it has something to do with their Norwegian heritage. After all, Oye
and Glambek Boe are products of a Continental culture where acoustic
indie-pop can peacefully coexist with electronic dance music - a notion
that hasn't gained much of a foothold on this side of the Atlantic. Oye
resides in Berlin, a Mecca for electronic music, and the influence of
his adopted home is evident on his surprisingly successful "DJ Kicks!"
mix CD of last year, which presented a hip selection of cutting-edge
dance music from taste-making labels such as Kompakt and Perlon. The
disc was especially hailed by the indie-rock community, which despite a
lot of seemingly progressive posturing, is reliably mistrustful of the
new, especially if it eschews guitars.
"I think people in
America who listen to indie rock just need to have a familiar name and
face to grab onto," Oye speculates, when asked if it was his intent to
usher indie fans toward electronic music. "In Europe, it's not such a
big deal."
Despite Oye's
fondness for dance music, his work with Glambek Boe is a different
affair: earnest, almost entirely acoustic, and despite its seeming
simplicity, deceptively complex.
"Most of our
efforts go into songwriting," Oye insists. "It takes three
years on average for us to perfect a single song."
The
duo's emphasis on craftsmanship is evident on its last album, "Riot on
an Empty Street," released last year on Astralwerks. More complex than
its first outings, "Riot on an Empty Street" introduced a mature,
sophisticated sound - expanded instrumentation (including a few moments
of polite drumming), novel tempos and haunting female vocals from
Leslie Feist of Broken Social Scene.
Feist was a
welcome
presence on stage during the final few songs of the Kings' SXSW
performance at Antone's on Saturday night. The capacity crowd kept the
networking to a whisper in deference for the duo, who shuffled through
a suite of songs from its past albums, in addition to an oddly haunting
cover of Tom Petty's "Free Falling." Oye, whose surprisingly hammy
showmanship was in stark contrast to the introversion of the music,
invoked audience participation on several songs, with mixed results.
Finger-snapping is all well and good, but when called upon to sing, the
mixed crowd of industry-types and hipsters mumbled its way through the
plaintive chorus of "The Build-Up" with the awkwardness of an atheist
at an Easter Sunday church service. But being called upon to perform
did not dampen the crowd's enthusiasm in the end, a testament that even
in these weary times that intelligence and subtlety can still
occasionally win out over novelty and (what else?) convenience.
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