The concept of a musical revolution coming from sensitive boys with acoustic guitars may be one of the more ridiculous conceits thrown up by a trend-hungry industry in the past few years. But it's hard not to notice how much music that'd be decried as wimpy whimsy not so long ago is suddenly prevalent and oddly fashionable.
At the vanguard of all this gentle introversion are Kings Of Convenience, a duo from Bergen, Norway. For two young men apparently concerned with their own melancholy dispositions, Eirik Glambek Boe and Erlend Oye have an uncanny and slightly over-eager grasp of the zeitgeist. They're friends, as they'll happily remind you, with scene archetypes Badly Drawn Boy and Alfie after time spent in Manchester. And then there's that awful album title, that betrays a little too much self-conscious knowledge for boys who'd like you to believe they hardly ever make it outside their own bedrooms.
That said, 'Quiet Is The New Loud' convincingly casts Boe and Oye as a millennial Simon & Garfunkel; hushed harmonies, nimble strums, lovely tunes, not a lot else. It's an album for well-mannered emotional crises in front of log fires, a soundtrack for quivering bottom lips. The sustained atmosphere is impressive, so that when a rhythm section and strings tiptoe into the mix on the excellent 'Failure', it almost sounds like a vulgar intrusion. Strange lyrics for Norwegians here, too: 'Failure' begins, Using The Guardian as a shield/ To cover my thighs against the rain, which, apart from being rather clumsy, suggests the Kings aren't looking primarily to their home market to become stars.
Beyond Simon & Garfunkel and the terribly fashionable Nick Drake, there are more recent and less credible influences here, too. Much of 'Quiet Is The New Loud' could easily have been released by the notoriously twee Sarah label a decade ago and been derided as jangly indie toss. Times change, though, a credible record company can work wonders, and we should be thankful songs as good as 'The Passenger' and 'I Don't Know What I Can Save You From' will reach far more people than those for whom Belle & Sebastian are a little too boisterous.
Perversion of punk ethics is completed on 'The Girl From Back Then', which strongly recalls America's 'Horse With No Name'. Not an inspiration for many aspirant young bands in the past 20 years, it's fair to say, but then Kings Of Convenience are charming enough to get away with so much. A pretty, and pretty good, start.
