Kings Of Convenience: Riot On An Empty Street [PIAS]

Why you'll love it

This [PIAS] reissue puts the Bergen duo's second album back on vinyl. It reached No. 2 in Norway, spent a year on the Italian chart with a No. 3 peak, and features Feist on "Know-How" and "The Build-Up."

About the album

Riot on an Empty Street is about as quiet as a riot gets. Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe recorded it at home in Bergen between September 2003 and March 2004: two guitars, one nylon-string and one steel, two voices in close harmony and a great deal of space around them, with nothing rushed and nothing wasted. It's music for a Sunday morning that has no plans and intends to keep it that way.

"Homesick" opens with the pair singing almost in unison, "Misread" is a gentle, bossa-tinged shuffle, and "Cayman Islands" is as sunny as its title. Leslie Feist co-wrote "Know-How" and sings on it, then returns to close the album on "The Build-Up." Producer Davide Bertolini adds upright and bowed bass, and viola, cello, trumpet and trombone colour the arrangements without ever raising the volume. "Stay Out of Trouble," "Live Long" and "Gold in the Air of Summer" keep the same soft, close-miked intimacy right to the end.

Øye went on to front The Whitest Boy Alive, and the duo kept to their own unhurried pace for years. The album has aged like good knitwear, which is to say it looks better every winter.

Also at Kops: more Kings of Convenience on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On [PIAS] Recordings (cat# PIASC1048LP), a reissue of the 2004 album.