With their 2001 UK debut “Quiet Is The New Loud”, Kings of Convenience made hip the concept of a Simon and Garfunkel for the new millennium. The from-nowhere success of fellow Norwegians, friends and remixers Röyksopp threatened to usurp this modest achievement, but with follow-up “Riot On An Empty Street” Erlend Øye and Erik Glambek Bøe have very, very gently wrestled back the spotlight.
Twelve tracks that undulate between Badly Drawn Boy (“Stay Out Of Trouble” and “Sorry Or Please”), Paul Heaton (“I’d Rather Dance With You”) and the recently-reformed Paul n’ Art, “Riot…” is sweetly sad and exquisitely produced, every breath and clipped consonant rendered with precision. Like “Quiet…”, the cover image of the duo and an unidentified pretty girl offers an awkward image of relationship angst. Unlike “Quiet…”, however, “Riot…” actually features female vocals on two tracks (“Know How” and closing song “The Build Up”), from French-Canadian singer and Peaches acolyte Leslie Feist.
Strings, horns, banjos and pianos all make appearances and Feist’s fragile vibrato is both unusual and alluring, but as ever the more stripped-down the track, the more lovely. Sparse opener “Homesick” is truly adorable, all harmonies and heartbreak, while the gorgeous, skeletal “Surprise Ice” – first heard on their eponymous 2000 US debut on Kindercore – offers a novel metaphor for romance: “Love comes like surprise ice on the water/Love comes like surprise ice at dawn.”
This still isn’t the kind of music that you’ll hear looped on adverts or behind sporting highlights, but instead simple, affecting songs that use the human heart as an instrument as surely as acoustic guitars. It’s the quiet ones you have to watch out for, after all, and everyone should be keeping an eye on Erlend and Erik.
