Plumbiferous Media

The Kings of Con­ve­nience, Erlend Øye and Eirik Glam­bek Bøe, have now been active for about a decade, pro­duc­ing under the Astral­w­erks label, and more recently, EMI. In fact, the bands first album under EMI was released this past Tues­day, and Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence cer­tainly shows off the band’s healthy level of expe­ri­ence. The duo’s new album con­tin­ues in the vein of relaxed, almost purist music that the Kings of Con­ve­nience have made their home, and Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence is not only one of the best light albums recently released but also one of the top albums released this year.

Although cer­tain non-guitar stringed instru­ments will occa­sion­ally add them­selves to the album, and a key­board can even be heard briefly on “Free­dom and Its Owner,” the Kings of Con­ve­nience focuses mainly on devel­op­ing its two most impor­tant instru­ments, its gui­tars. Although roles shift as flu­idly as the music itself, the stan­dard arrange­ment seems to be one rhythm gui­tar and one melodic or har­monic gui­tar. Although both work together to cre­ate an incred­i­bly diverse, beau­ti­ful album, the rhythm gui­tar must be given its own award for act­ing not only as sim­ply a rhythm gui­tar, but a per­cus­sion instru­ment as nec­es­sary. And as is to be expected from two expert gui­tarists, the instru­men­tal sec­tion of the album never falls short of excel­lent. Instru­ments never cease to inter­act per­fectly with one another, never stray too long on a sin­gle seg­ment and fall into repet­i­tive­ness, never fail to pro­vide per­fect amounts of con­trast between tracks, and always remain rich, tex­tu­rally detailed, decep­tively intri­cate, and utterly beautiful.

The vocal inter­play between Erlend Øye and Eirik Glam­bek Bøe is both beau­ti­fully com­posed and per­fectly suited to the slow, melodic sound of Kings of Con­ve­nience. Almost con­stant vocal har­monies pro­vide vocal lay­ers through­out the music, which change posi­tion flu­idly, care­fully pre­vent­ing con­flict between the two vocal­ists. Instead, their voices are expertly fit together, both with each other and within the larger musi­cal cocoon of Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence. It’s a fun­da­men­tally sim­ple com­bi­na­tion, but one which is respon­si­ble for a remark­able amount of Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence’s suc­cess. Vocally, Kings of Con­ve­nience cre­ates a sound that is simul­ta­ne­ously clear and beau­ti­fully com­plex - not unlike their music as a whole.

Lyri­cally, Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence is sim­ple but by no means sim­plis­tic. The way in which Øye and Bøe’s vocals com­ple­ment each other is dou­bly impres­sive when applied to the imagery through­out Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence. One of the bet­ter tracks of the album, “My Ship Isn’t Pretty,” begins with the intrigu­ing “The tele­graph gave us hope / Before was the silence and the panic it brought / The sky was the blank­est sheet / We drew lines upon it so our thoughts could meet.” Slightly sub­dued vocals tell the tale beau­ti­fully, with details such as the slight exha­la­tion on the last syl­la­ble of “hope” infus­ing the music with life. Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence is care­fully filled with com­pelling sto­ries of this sort, such that it is as strong lyri­cally as it is vocally.

And not only do the lyrics fit per­fectly with the vocals, but the vocals fit per­fectly with the instru­men­tals, the instru­men­tals reflect the mean­ing of the lyrics, and the entire album con­stantly pulls itself into a cohe­sive, never tir­ing sea of music. Addi­tion­ally com­mend­able is the record­ing and mas­ter­ing itself, which man­aged to pro­vide the album in extreme clar­ity, but also immensely detailed depth of sound, and even more notice­ably, warmth of sound, all to an extent that is gen­er­ally quite dif­fi­cult to achieve with­out a vinyl copy. Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence is, though maybe not the per­fect album, cer­tainly an amaz­ing album, from any and every perspective.

Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence is a tri­umph for Kings of Con­ve­nience. Com­bin­ing expertly orches­trated vocals, well-written and intrigu­ing lyrics, and well-composed instru­men­tals, all with the sub­tlety that is a trade­mark of the group, Kings of Con­ve­nience has taken all of the best parts of their ear­lier work and com­bined it into their best work so far. Dec­la­ra­tion of Depen­dence is thought-provoking, intrigu­ing, entirely gen­uine, and in short, excellent.

This post is tagged 90-100, Kings of Convenience