Coming on like a Stuka on a Blitzkrieg run, opener ‘Homesick’ hurtles towards you from out of nowhere, all crunching metal and screaming engines. Using wrenches for plectrums, lead piping for drumsticks and employing a bassline recorded in Satan’s bowels, it’s the sonic equivalent of Armageddon.
And then, frighteningly, it drops its payload.
With an aural onslaught never before witnessed by Man or Woman - think Ministry meets Rage Against The Machine with a large dollop of Sabbath - Kings of Convenience find the mystical eleven on the amp and reach a level in Rock not previously graced by mere mortals. “Riot! Riot! Riot on a quiet street!” screams Erland Øye, exorcising all memories of their debut album ‘Quiet is the new Loud’ with one guttural cry of sheer noise terror.
Or perhaps not.
Maybe in an alternate universe Norway’s answer to Simon & Garfunkel are destroying teenage ear-drums without due care and attention, sacrificing virgins at the altar of ROCK and flirting with the Prince of Darkness, but on this temporal plain they offer us music that never threatens to be anything more than a pleasant distraction.
Which is not to damn their second album with feint praise. I enjoy pleasant distractions; those brief but meaningful tonics for body and soul that resurrect the spirit and return you to a better place for a while, until the mundane and the masses once again reclaim the upper hand.
That said, there is a strong whiff of acute self-awareness about K.O.C and their art, a nagging sense that this type of music is being made to coincide with a bohemian lifestyle sanitised by style supplements rather than one that comes from genuine avant-garde experience. Their first album’s titular declaration and its subsequent positioning a few years back as the letterhead for the New Acoustic Movement’s mandate does little to deflect from this perception.
The CD artwork says it all really. Picture 1 is a shot of the duo at home with their soft furnishings (Comfy sofa? Check. Warm rug? Check. Corduroy trousers? Check), playing chess. A dark, attractive and mysterious ice-queen with a book of (probably) 17th Century Swedish verse exchanges a knowing, conspiratorial look with Erland, while Eirik (the dumb schmuck) looks out innocently at us.
Inside, picture 2 shows our musical heroes continuing the game of chess (Focus Eirick you cuckold! Knight must take pawn!), but Erland is distracted, pining for the brunette (returning that book to the library no doubt) and not really concentrating on the game anymore. (More fool him: checkmate for Erland in five moves. Ha.)
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Oh well, if all else fails there’s always a short walk later to the local arthouse for the Bergman double-bill. (But only if it stops raining: picture 3)
Despite their contrivances it’s hard not to like K.O.C. So, suspend your disbelief, allay the cynic in you and enter their observational world of love: found, laboured and lost.
Their lyrics – married to songs with no nonsense titles such as ‘Misread’ and ‘Love is no big Truth’– are always engaging, offering cameos of tentative and tender moments in and out of love. “I walked around for hours/two ten pence pieces in my hand./I was alone and freezing,/still trying hard to understand you.” (‘Stay out of Trouble’) “All I do is sleep all day, /and think of you. A memory of the cushioned life/ I’m clinging to.” (‘Love is no big Truth’).
Throughout the duo retain the warm harmonies (“the sound of two soft voices blended in perfection” – ‘Homesick’) so strongly reminiscent of their 60’s NY counterparts. The acoustic pluck and strum is augmented by occasional flurries of piano, viola and trumpet. Indeed the trio of central tracks (‘Sorry or Please’, ‘Love is no big Truth’ and ‘I’d rather dance with you’) of the album almost entirely ditch the acoustic mainstays in favour of a more – whisper it now – electric sound. Oh, and a girl called Feist (our mysterious brunette librarian?) sings on a couple of tracks.
Where K.O.C succeed is in brilliantly realising the faux bohemia they have created. Their songs are like contented sighs and their melodies, whilst light, do have an ability to break through the exteriors of many a doubting Thomas or hard-hearted Harry. I also like them because Four Tet did a remix on their ‘Versus’ album.
An acquired taste for sure but a pleasant one none the less. A bit like one of my favourite distractions.
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