Miscommunication, mis-reading, and the different tensions in relationships between two people that arise from these – a lot of Kings of Convenience’s songs are about all that.
But because their lyrics can sometimes be elliptical or too suggestive, and they’re doing their wonderful soothing harmonies over wonderfully in-synch acoustic guitar rhythms, I’m assuming that for a lot of people, KOC songs are more ache than bite.
But as I watched tonight’s gig (the first of two sold-out shows), I couldn’t help but wonder – are these beautiful, sometimes love-y relationship-y songs actually songs they’ve written to each other?
The perceived creative tensions in the relationship between Norwegians’ Erlend Oye and Eirik Glambek Boe hasn’t reached the mythic heights of a Lennon vs. McCartney thing (and neither could you compare them to Simon and Garfunkel – because for all of Art Garfunkel’s angelic voice, there’s really no contest as to who wielded the power right?)
But yes, it’s bubbling underneath somewhere.
You get glimpses of it. During the quick meet-the-press event on Wednesday, someone asked if it’s getting more difficult working as Kings of Convenience.
“Before a band is famous, everyone in the band works hard to become famous. After you become famous, you see less reason to compromise yourself,” said Erland.
Eirik agreed that as they’ve grown older as people (and as KOC), “our egos have somewhat stiffened. We’re both becoming more and more difficult as individuals to cooperate with.”
(That said, he added that they’ve sort of come up with an arrangement when they were making their third album, titled – ahem – Declaration of Dependence – where they alternate on days where they get to play boss. “I think we’ve learnt a few techniques, which I’d like to share with older married couples in the world,” he quipped.)
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At the concert, they hardly did band banter (although both were very good with quips addressed to the audience). The only time they’d talk to each other was when they’d consult each other on what song to play next (they didn’t have a set list, which I thought was cool – but in case you really want to know, they played songs from across all three of their albums, including a couple of tracks from Quiet is the New Loud, their debut and still my most favourite album of theirs.)
And then there’s their completely contrasting personalities.
On one side you’ve got the introverted, domesticised, philosophical, pensive Eirik, who plays mostly on a Spanish classical guitar and doesn’t seem to like to improvise so much onstage.
On the other, you’ve got Erland, the extrovert hipster showman who plays the steel stringed guitar and looooves to improvise (he’d do an imitation trombone lead).
Erland also had a foot-in-mouth moment when in poor taste – or maybe just something lost in translation — he quipped that the Indonesians in the crowd just bought the “poor seats” because they were at the back while the Filipinos were right in front.
(Although it has to be said that he also did a solo and utterly moving cover of Big Star’s Thirteen in honour of Alex Chilton who had passed away on Wednesday.)
However way you look at it, Kings of Convenience is an odd couple.
And that, for me, made the whole concert even more interesting.
The great acoustic songs they’ve written should be enough to delight their fans and the casual listeners alike. But I just found it even better reading all of it as a kind of ongoing dialogue between these two clashing-yet-complementary creative minds.
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Concert pics courtesy of the Esplanade.
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