"It Somehow Sounds Complete!" Kings Of Convenience Interviewed

Clash

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The Norwegian duo on the fastidious processes behind their glorious new album...

Kings Of Convenience have always had a remarkable unity to their sound. The Norwegian duo – Erlend Oye and Eirik Glambek Boe – have been friends since school, an intimate associate that allows them to know one another inside out. On record, their voices intertwine like vines around a tree – at points, they even seem to blur into one another.

A glorious sound, the pair recently returned with the relaxing folk-hewn songwriting that fuels the wonderful ‘Peace Or Love’. The duo’s first album in five years, it’s lengthy gestation is in part due to geography – Erlend moved to the Sicilian country, while Eirik remains in their native Bergen – but also due to the way the two work; fastidious and exacting, it’s not perfection they’re seeking, but a certain feel.

“I think it was in 2015 when we did some shows and I remember feeling that – no, we’ve gotta put out a new album now,” Erlend recalls. “I just felt that I wanted more of a challenge, and to feel that the band was alive.”

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Ever in-sync, Eirik agreed – in fact, he’d already been writing new songs, which he was eager for his partner to hear. “We have this constant negotiation of trying to figure out how to give both of us enough time to live another life, and at the same time keep the band going,” says Erlend. “I think that the value of keeping the band going is so high to both of us. It’s so cool when you go 20 years as a band, I mean there’s not that many people around who can do that.”

What makes them stand out, though, is that unique sound – recalling Nick Drake or peers such as The Tallest Man On Earth, Kings Of Convenience have a frosted, devoutly Nordic take on acoustic songwriting. “The harmony is a key element for Kings of Convenience melodies,” says Eirik. “When I sing something that’s quite low my voice lacks certain frequencies but together with Erland it somehow sounds complete.”

New album ‘Peace Or Love’ has a completeness to it. At times beautiful and lush, at others spartan, it finds Kings Of Convenience finessing their sound; it’s not a reinvention, it’s more a sense of finding focus, and drilling down further. It’s an approach the duo find fruitful; on tour in 2015, they booked an ad hoc session in Santiago following a spate of shows in Chile, and the album began almost by accident.

Laying down their song ‘Angel’ – fulsome of melody, refulgent of vocal – they left it for six months, before realising that this demo was in fact the finished take. Indeed, that’s how ‘Peace Or Love’ was constructed – piecemeal, in both Sicily and Bergen, the duo would record a song, and then leave it. Record a song, and then leave it. Little wonder the process was so convoluted, as Erlend readily admits.

“In the end it took so much longer time than I thought to make it. It’s just, to actually sit down in the right room, with the right guitars and sing a song in beautiful way that works –you’ve gotta have a good day! I mean, both of us has to have a good day, and the recording engineer has to have a good day. There’s no other band like us so we can’t fit into an existing blue print of how to do it.”

“Perfectionism isn’t really the right word,” he muses. “I mean, we are inspired by perfectionist musicians, but we are not perfectionists. It’s just it takes – you need a long break after an intense period just to be able to recognise it”.

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Searching after some hidden feeling, Kings Of Convenience spent long hours in the studio, whittling away at each song until they unveiled its essence. “I guess we have kind of an idea in our minds, somehow, of what we are looking for. We are looking for something that shouldn’t sound too polished but at the same time it has to convince. We only know it when we feel it.”

There’s no such thing as wasted time, Clash offers. “It’s a nice proverb,” smiles Eirik. “I know a lot of countries that don’t agree. It sounds like something people in northern countries must agree on!”

“I think everything I do at one point in life leads to something else in surprisingly different situations later in life. It’s this butterfly effect that keeps happening all the time.” - The butterfly effect – the impact of chance – rippled through ‘Peace Or Love’. Whether that’s recording with a noted composer in Germany, or their old friend Leslie Feist inviting them back into the studio, ‘Peace Or Love’ wound its own haphazard path. “It’s only as you’re building the album together that you start to understand what you’re making. Song by song, an aesthetic appears. Every time we start, we think it’s going to be so easy this time, and then in the end it always ends up something like this, like a jacket made from five different materials.”

That’s the essential contradiction within Kings Of Convenience – what sounds effortlessly natural and off the cuff is actually incredibly studied, and impeccably detailed. They’re travelling a long distance, creatively speaking, only to return to the space they initially occupied. Eirik explains: “What I’ve discovered now is that if I listen back to a take, and if my first instinct when the song is over is ‘I wanna hear this again’ – that’s a good song. If I wanted to hear the song one more time when I’ve heard it that’s usually the sign I’m after. That’s a crude technique but it’s helpful.”

“What I’ve discovered that our type of music, acoustic music, and live performances in front of a microphone in a studio – well, that requires some mistake or moments where you lose control, or something magical happens that you didn’t plan to happen. All of these things are necessary to create this sense of emotional presence, and by that I don’t mean infusing your emotion in your performance - because that’s something that I don’t like particularly - but at the same time there needs to be a sense of emotional presence. We have to sound like we are good friends.”

Separated by the length of a continent, Kings Of Convenience have somehow kept their partnership going. Perhaps the distance helps – every few months, Eirik will pack his things and go to the Sicily, where the two of them will speak, relax, and write. In a way, it’s idyllic – but those sessions require an audience, and that’s something both musicians are yearning for. Whether it’s playing Sydney Opera House in Australia or their recent run of shows in Norway, Kings Of Convenience thrive on the sense of communal that can only come with a live audience.

“Oh, it’s been so nice to finally be back on stage and playing these new songs!” Eirik exclaims. “It’s been long overdue; I mean we spent too many years in the studio and then when we were done suddenly the pandemic came so it became even later – even more overdue. I’m very, very ready now.”

The world is ready to have them back – we’re all in need of the regal folk sounds that halo Kings Of Convenience.

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'Peace Or Love' is out now.

Words: *Robin Murray *
Photo Credit: *Salvo Alibi*

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