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Kings of Convenience Vibes

Eighteen songs from two Norwegians who titled their first album Quiet Is the New Loud and then spent twenty years proving it.

Kings of Convenience

Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe met at school in Bergen and have made records together, intermittently and unhurriedly, ever since. Their debut arrived in 2001 with a title that functioned as a manifesto, at a moment when British and American guitar music was as loud and as posturing as it had been in years.

The formula has barely changed and does not need to. Two acoustic guitars, two voices in close harmony, occasional strings, and a level of dynamic restraint that borders on the perverse — nothing on any of their albums is louder than a conversation.

What keeps it from preciousness is the songwriting, which is considerably more sophisticated than the arrangements let on. The chord movements are jazz-inflected, the interlocking guitar parts are genuinely intricate, and the lyrics are dry rather than sentimental.

What to listen for

"Misread" is the best-known and the best-constructed — two guitar parts that are doing quite different things, and a vocal line that sits across both of them.

"Cayman Islands" opens the set and is the prettiest thing they have recorded.

"I'd Rather Dance With You" appears twice, in the album version and the radio mix, and it is the exception that proves the rule — the one record in the catalogue you could actually dance to.

"Know How" with Feist is the collaboration and the most charming track here, with the two voices trading verses.

"Homesick" and "24-25" are where the writing is most affecting, and "Rule My World" is the most harmonically adventurous.

"Rumours", "Freedom And Its Owner" and "Fever"-adjacent later material comes from the long-delayed fourth album and shows no decline at all.

The acoustic session version of "Misread" is worth hearing next to the original.

Go deeper

Quiet Is the New Loud (2001) and Riot on an Empty Street (2004) are the two essential albums. Peace or Love (2021) arrived after an eleven-year gap and was worth the wait.

Erlend Øye's other projects — The Whitest Boy Alive and his solo electronic work — are startlingly different and worth investigating. Simon & Garfunkel and Nick Drake are the obvious ancestors; Feist and José González the contemporaries.

Listening note: the two guitars are playing different parts, not the same part twice. Separate them — one tends to hold the harmony while the other plays a countermelody — and what sounded like two men strumming turns out to be genuinely intricate ensemble writing. Headphones make this obvious immediately.

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