Kings Of Convenience

Reviews

Quiet Is The New Loud (CD) Source
The band's breakthrough LP is largely a rehash of their Kindercore debut, with songs like Winning A Battle, Losing The War and Failure losing their rough edges to polished production. Personally I like rough edges, and prefer the Kindercore album, but there are sufficient new songs here to warrant a listening. Judging by Singing Softly To Me the band may be planning moves into jazzier territory, but Summer On The Westhill is exactly the kind of harmonic acoustic pop that the band do so well, and is the best of the new songs.

Kings Of Convenience (CD) Kindercore
Folky pop duo Kings of Convenience both play acoustic guitars, and with harmonised vocals over the top its all too easy to mention Simon and Garfunkel, but their sound is actually far closer to Elliott Smith's early records, and at times the softly lilting vocal style even calls to mind Irish folk singers like Christy Moore. Opening with the words "In the sky the birds are pulling rain", this collection of songs uses intriguing imagery throughout which seems fairly alien to the English language, though I suspect it may be less remarkable in their native Norwegian. If you're thinking that this doesn't sound like your sort of thing you are almost certainly wrong, because this is a *fantastic* record.