No Filler Music Podcast - Bonus Episode: The Demo Files - Kings of Convenience :: Quiet Is The New Loud

Episode Date: September 28, 2018

While Travis is out of town and super busy, we decided to upload a previously un-aired episode from the early days. We recorded an episode on Kings of Convenience's first studio album, "Quiet Is The New Loud" around a year ago and ended up airing an entirely different episode on their second full length, "Riot On An Empty Street" for episode 7. This is one of the first episodes ever recorded for the podcast, in the early days shortly after coming up with the idea. Hope You Enjoy it!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Boarding for flight 246 to Toronto is delayed 50 minutes. Ugh, what? Sounds like Ojo time. Play Ojo? Great idea. Feel the fun with all the latest slots in live casino games and with no wagering requirements. What you win is yours to keep groovy. Hey, I won! Feel the fun!

The meeting will begin when passenger Fisher is done celebrating. 19 plus Ontario only. Please play responsibly concerned by your gambling or that if someone close, you call 1866533 or visit Comex Ontario.ca. With Amex Platinum. You have access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. So your experience before takeoff is a taste of what's to come. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply.

It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get a nice rank on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Goaltenders, no. But chicken tenders, yes. those are groceries, and we deliver those too,

along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Life's never felt so expensive, and most people are cautious about spending.

But IKEA's always been the smart choice for creating beautiful homes, on a budget. Right now, IKEA family members can save even more with an extra 5% in store on eligible purchases. Visit IKEA-USA.com slash family for more details. Offer valid starting September 1st, 2022, limited to qualifying purchases, exclusion supply, not valid on services, discount applied in-store only before tax, shipping, and handling.

Cannot be combined with coupons. 92% of households that start the year with Peloton are still active a year later. 92%? Because of a bike? Not just bikes. We also make treadmills and rowers. Oh, let me guess. For elite athletes only, right? Nope. It doesn't matter if you're an avid exerciser or new to working out. Peloton can help you achieve your fitness goals. 92% stick with it. So can you. Try Peloton bikes, tread or row risk free with a 30-day home trial. New members only. Not available in remote locations. See additional terms at onepellaton.com

slash home dash trial. And welcome to this message. An FYI announcement dedicated to letting you know that Travis and I will not be releasing a full-length episode for the next few weeks. Travis is going to be in and out of town. He's super busy. So we're not going to be able to get together and record a full-length episode. But in the meantime, what we're going to do is release one of our very first recordings when we decided to get this thing going about a year. ago, an episode that we didn't end up launching with.

So we ended up covering Kings of Convenience in episode seven with their second studio album, Right on an Empty Street. But we were originally going to cover their very first album, Quiet is the New Loud. But we ended up ditching that episode and then, you know, we ended up putting together the episode for Ride on an empty street instead. So, again, this is one of our very first episodes. So we're pulling from the archives, my friends. This one, again, covers their very first studio album.

It's called Quiet as the New Loud. And we recorded this over a year ago. So it's going to be a little bit different, the format and all that, because we kind of fine-tuned and changed some things over time before we launched the podcast. So it's going to be a little bit different. But I thought it would be cool to just share that with you in the meantime

for the next couple weeks. I'm also going to just kind of jump on here from time to time and release some bonus sidetrack episodes where I'm just going to cover some music that I've been into lately. Just do it by myself while Travis is gone. Just give you something else to listen to in the meantime. I think the first or second week of October, we will be back to our regular schedule. So don't give up on us yet.

Apologies for not releasing anything this past Sunday. I'm going to throw this episode up real quick, and then I'm going to put together a quick sidetrack for you all to listen to as well. I might put that up either tonight or tomorrow. So we'll continue to have content for you in the meantime. Again, thank you so much, as always, for listening. And, hey, jump back and listen to some of our older episodes. We have a whopping...

Shit, I think, like 41 episodes up now since we first started, including the sidetracks. Yeah, so we got a lot of content for you to listen to. So, yeah, that's going to do it for this announcement. And again, this is going to be... we're going to pull from our, from our demos, and we're going to release this, this Kings of Convenience episode for you. I hope you enjoy it. It is going to be kind of repetitive.

If you did actually listen to episode seven on Riot on an empty street, since we did kind of roll with that one and treated it as though we had never covered Kings of Convenience before, we're going to kind of go into their history again. But again, this is just a whole, a whole other episode, a whole other episode. a whole other album that we hadn't covered before. I thought it'd be cool to share it with you. So this is our take on Kings of Conveniences. Very first album, Quiet is the New Loud.

Hope you enjoy it. And welcome to the second episode of No Filler, a music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on some of our favorite records. In each episode, we'll dive into a little bit of, little history of the artist and the album of choice, with snippets from interviews and concerts, as well as music from the album itself. My name is Quentin, and with me is my brother Travis,

and what are we getting into today? So last week we talked about antidotes by Foles, which is a dance punk, math rock album, among other things. So this week we thought we'd do a 180 and talk about the debut album by Norwegian, folk pop duo kings of convenience the name of the album is quiet is the new loud so keel let's talk about the a little bit of the background of who these guys are and what they do yeah so for starters i'll just go ahead and say this right now one of my favorite bands uh always in forever um they will always be in my top five i think travis you could probably say the same right yep i second that for sure yeah absolutely everything about these guys um so they're

They're a duo, like we said. They're from Norway. We've got Erland Oya and Eric or Iric Bo. They were both born in 1975, and they actually go way back. They met at age 10. They met at a geography contest that was put together by their schools. They went to different schools, but they met. at this geography contest.

And they actually, I think Erland won first place for his ability to draw a world map. From memory or something? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, let's jump to age 16. They met up again in,

I think they're saying junior high. It might be a little bit different in Norway. Actually, I've got a clip here. I'll go ahead and just let Erlin, and Eric just kind of fill us in on when they met up again and when they started playing music together. So here's a clip from KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic at a radio station based out of Santa Monica, California. This was an interview that came out back in May of 2005.

So when you say you first met when you were 10 years old, when did you, When did you first start making music together and how did that come about? We were 16, we were both in the same class in, what you call? College High School, I don't know what you call it. Junior high school. And I had just bought a guitar and Erlen had just bought a guitar. And that was the reason for us to start hanging out together. It was like, hey, weren't you that guy from that geography contest?

Yeah, that was me. What you do now? I play guitar. Oh, I just bought a guitar too. Let's meet. and then we started making not so sweet music in the beginning it took some time before it became sweet

but it was basically the same thing as we're doing now two guitars and well I actually didn't sing yeah I did sing at first but then I kind of left you got self-conscious yeah and I let Erlon do the singing for a few years and then I mean we we started a rock band

and Erlon was the lead singer of the rock band. And then a few years later, I discovered that, hey, I can also sing. And that's when we started our harmonizing. That's pretty crazy to me that Eric was shy and didn't realize that he had such a great voice. Well, like, their harmonizing is what makes them so great. Is it how well their voices, like, work with each other, you know? Yeah.

Like perfect harmony in my mind. opinion. Well, and same, I mean, I think that Eric has, between the two of them, I think, I like Eric's voice better. It's a little bit, it's slightly, it's deeper. Yeah, it's a little deeper. So they mentioned, they mentioned that they weren't doing pretty songs. Or sweet.

He said sweet songs. Or sweet songs. Yeah, yeah. I wonder if he means, like, if he literally means, like, sweet as in, like, love songs, or does he just mean like... I think he means sweet as in like fulky acoustic stuff because... So they mentioned that they formed a rock band.

They had a band called Skog and they had a couple more members in the band and like Eric was saying, Aerland was the lead singer. There's a really cool fan page, like a Kings of Convenience fan page that will link to on our website that has a lot of cool, like,

links to interviews and it's got like a pretty long list of the concerts that they've done over the years. But it has the entire EP that they released as the band Skog in 96 called Tom Tidsdale. And you can just download the MP3s from that EP right off of that website. and give it a listen if you'd like. It's, it is a little heavier, I guess. It's more rock and roll. You know, there's some distortion on the guitar and everything, but it's still, I mean, there's harmonizing on there.

I'm surprised that it's not Eric. That's harmonizing with Ireland. I guess Ireland's just harmonizing with himself or something. I don't know. Didn't they just come out with a new record? No, it's not Skog. it's another band. I forgot what they go by,

but Eric is, it's members from Skog. Okay, the only reason I say that is because there's a guy harmonizing and I bet you it's him who harmonized with him. Oh, okay. You know what I mean?

Gotcha. Yeah. Commode. Commode. Yeah, good call. Commode, yeah. Those are with members from Skog. And what's, you know what's funny about,

and this is a tangent, but I listened to the newest commode and it sounds an awful lot like Whitest Boy Alive. Have you heard any of it? So I don't know. It's kind of weird that like both of their side projects kind of go into this like disco. Disco, yeah. Yeah, so for those of you who don't know, Whiteest Boy Alive is a side project

that Ireland was a part of for a little bit and yeah, it's like this disco disco pop kind of music. It's really good. But yeah, I think it's funny too that when Ireland and Eric are apart from each other doing separate projects, they still, like they're doing the same thing,

just apart. Like they might as well just make a Kings of Convenience like a disco album. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. They should get together and do that. If you think about it, like some of the tracks are like that. like I'd rather dance with you.

It's pretty disco-y, you know. It's really disco-y. But either way. But I feel like we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Yeah, we are. Yeah. So, and that's just because we're huge fans of these guys. Yeah.

It's easy to go down side roads, you know? Yeah, yeah. So late 90s, they formed this band Skog. They released one EP, Tom Tidsdale. Nothing really came from. from that. And then a few years later, they just decided, hey, let's just make music together. And they went with the name Kings of Convenience because they thought, oh, we're just two guys

with acoustic guitars. We're the kings of convenience. You know, like, we can go anywhere and make music together. And poise they ever. Seriously, though. No, I think it's funny that, well, what I want to know is this. and we may never know the answer, Q. But when Eric discovered that he could sing,

I wonder, and then they discovered, hey, we could harmonize. I wonder if that was like the origin for like, hey, maybe we could do songs that sound sort of like Simon and Garfunkel, you know? Yeah. Because you really can't do Kings of Convenience without the harmonizing. So I wonder if like, maybe that was like, hey, let's start. I'm just curious about that and probably I never know. but there's a cool quote from

I'm not sure what the article is but it's in your original notes that you put together for the show When are you talking about notes? Our original brainstorm This is all right off the top of my hand, brother. No, no, no, no, no. The brainstorm notes that we had for this episode.

I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, well, either way. There's a quote from Ireland. It says here, the reason I made this music was because I always wanted to hear more of it. It's the music that makes me feel very peaceful and speaks to me more than other music. So he's referring to the type of music that him and Eric make. Yeah, and he says, you know, with the band Skog, he was getting sick of all the songs going from quiet to loud.

and you started wondering if they could go from quiet to even quieter, where the quieter bit is the most intense bit of the song. That's awesome, in my opinion. Like, to think that way about writing music. And which is, so hence the title of the album that we're talking about this week, Quiet is the new loud. I don't know if intense is the right word to use because I would never describe any part of a Kings of Convenience song as intense.

but I guess he means like the most interesting part of the song. Like the entirety of the song is quiet. So there's no part that gets really, it just stays the same. That's the whole point. Yeah. And didn't that kind of become a new mantra almost for... Kind of around that time.

Yeah. Quiet is the new wave. The new wave like folky kind of stuff, I guess. Yep. So my picks for this week it's two songs, but in reality, it's really parts one and two of the same song. So I'm going with track three, which is called Singing Softly to Me, and then I'm going with track seven as well, the girl from back then.

But if you look at the liner notes, these are actually parts one and two of the same song. So they split up the different parts of the song. on two sides of the record. But if you listen to them back to back, it's quite obvious that it's two parts of the same song. And I'm going to play a clip. So what I'm going to do for this song, or these songs, I'm going to play a live version of Part 1,

singing softly to me. One thing about King's Convenience, that they're just unbelievable live. We haven't had a chance to see them. live yet because they've regularly come to America. But it's just something special about them. If you ever get a chance to see them live, I highly recommend it. At the very least, watch a few of their concerts on YouTube.

So I found a really great clip from 2000. So this was from March of 2000. This was actually before this album was released. It's from a music festival. in Europe called Crossing. It's called Crossing Border Music Festival. And this is a clip of, so we've got Aerolyn who's kind of explaining the meaning behind the song singing softly to me.

And then what I'm going to do is have it fade into their girlfriend back then the actual recording from the album. So I've got a live recording of singing softly to me And it fades into the actual track of the girlfriend back then from the album So I'll just go ahead and play it The next song we're going to play is called singing softly to me It's a song about realizing that the girl you were together with when you were 16 years old Realizing that she was actually the love of your life

Eight years later. It's called singing softly to me. I think so much better. It's a bit of the distance. It's been right. Things seem so much better when than at a thought of your close surroundings

and the descent amplified by the distance possibilities and sweeter dreams sights and suns calling from the far away Call and come far away Then I did a girl I couldn't tell you

Saying sauce to me I didn't know you I can see the brave girls I knew me I didn't know you then I did a girl I couldn't tell you Saying sauce to me Saying sauce you to me

The mystery that could be salt A puzzle with pieces missing One story that could be the fishing part of fishing I couldn't tell you, saying soft to me I didn't know you then I did I go I didn't see the brave girls near me I didn't know you then I did I girl I couldn't tell you

Say something soft to me love it was you old time she told me I had nothing to I sat down when I suffered

Such a pretty song Right Well it's just amazing to hear Like The live song And then you Like you did Well you blended it into the actual

The next track The actual track from Yeah Because like You I mean really if you played if you played the

album version of the live track that you played I bet you you couldn't tell the difference because they're so spot on and because I mean let's be honest they're the kings of convenience that's probably how they recorded the album you know

just them with their guitars and a microphone yeah it's just simple simple music you know yeah simple music it's just two dudes with their two acoustic guitars.

And, you know, I mentioned if you get a chance to see them live, do it. I haven't myself, but the thing that I love so much about these two guys, you know, just based on concert footage that I've seen online, they don't take themselves seriously, and that's what I love about them. If you watch their concerts, almost in between every song it seems like they they goof off and you know make each other laugh and make the audience laugh and uh for for the kind of music that they play they don't they just don't take themselves seriously and it's just what i love about them they don't try to be anyone else

you know they're just they're two close close friends that love making music together and they love sharing it with other people and they like making people laugh I just love him. Ayrlin seems like one of the most easy-going dudes in the music viz, man. Especially when you watch, like, I'd rather dance with you music video. Oh, yeah. Like his dance moves are legendary. Well, and the fact that his side project is a band called The Whitest Boy Alive.

Referring to, obviously, referring to himself. For sure. Obviously. Because, I mean, if you look at a picture of him, that might be it's true yeah it's absolutely true yeah so let's i want to talk about the lyrics a little bit with this song um singing softly to me i i love the the bit about you know i want a story that couldn't be told i want a mystery that couldn't be solved um i want a puzzle with pieces missing it's like he's saying

Okay, so I just found out now that this girl that I knew back when I was 16, you know, I meet her again later on in my life and I find out that we had something special back then. Neither of us really realized it. We're actually the love, you know, she's the love of my life. I wish that I could have that. So the only way to have that is to have a story that couldn't be told. puzzle with pieces missing You know? Because it's impossible.

Man, I wish I'd known that. And then, you know, like later on in the song, it says, I didn't know. What does he say? I didn't know you then, now did I? Girl. Like, I didn't know that you thought this way about me back then. If I did, you know, I would have acted on it.

It's just one of those, it's a tragic love story, really. It's like, man, if only I had known. But is it one of the one. one of those things that like so okay so did he meet back up with the girl and then wrote the song or is he just reflecting back on it i don't know it seems like in the girl from back then in part two um because you know it's easy to get like to romanticize like young love you know what i mean yeah i don't know um but either way this this whole album is just chockful of like uh whata shoulda coulda you know like a lot of yeah

Love stories that just didn't ever happen the way that they wished that it would. Like the song that we started the podcast with this week, Toxic Girl. Yeah. Like it's a girl that just that is just not in it for love. But they're, you know, he's writing about it in the perspective of someone that's just head over heels with this girl. But she's just, that's just not her style. She's not into love. She's just, you know, she's in it one day and gone the next.

There's just a ton of songs on this album like that, especially your pick for the week. Let's go ahead and play a clip of that real quick. This is track eight. It's titled Leaning Against the Wall. What I like about this one is it's kind of a different. It's more kind of jazzy. It's got these obvious like Samba guitar rhythms.

Hang on a second. Did you say Samba? Yeah. I'm pretty sure it's Samba, dude. Well, you know, we all, you know, learn something every day. I can always count on you to point out my mispronunciation of words. So, Samba guitar rhythms. Uh-huh.

you're right it is samba it's totally samba you know why i know not now i know because i'm thinking about that song on um the gitson gilberto album there you go where he actually says samba in the song the reason i'm bringing that up i was going to bring it up anyways because you know that's gitsyn gilberto is like probably my first exposure to samba style of guitar yeah so yeah it's track number six so so so so dantso samba that's what he said So yeah, you're right. It's Samba. Anyway, that's what I like about the song.

What I really like about the song, though, is the lyrics. It's way dark. Yeah. I think... It's super dark. It may even be the same... He might be talking about the same girl that they're talking about and girl from back then. Let's just call it what it is, dude.

This is an emo song. Sure. It's emo. It's emo. It's emo. But I don't think, but to me this isn't, this is just the human experience, man. So I'm going to read some of the lyrics. All right.

So to me, what the song is, and this is my interpretation, I think it's pretty accurate. Sounds like it's, you know, this guy is bracing for some bad news, some heartache. Perhaps his lover is just sort of fessed up to, you know, cheating, stepping out. The lyrics are, your eyes are cold. I know you'll tell me all Not to fall I lean against the wall I'm on the floor

Not listening anymore I should have known The things to which you're prone I love it Yeah I mean Yeah it's great I love it

Yeah It tells so much Because Yeah you can feel that You can feel that impact The fact that I like Especially lean against the wall Yeah and I like that he goes from that

To saying I'm on the floor now And I'm not even listening to you Yeah So this guy is, he's up against the wall. He's slowly kind of sliding down the wall. Now he's sitting down. She's talking the whole time, probably. Yeah.

Apologizing trying to explain it. And then if you, you know, you listen to the song all the way through, you notice that they've got like a back and forth where I think it's Iric that's singing the bulk of this song and Erlund's the background vocals. But in the background, he says, you cross your arms and tell no lies, a thousand thoughts. run through my mind, a thousand words that I don't need. I never thought you could do this. It's almost like he's, I don't know.

It's like, it's like he knows. He knew that this was coming, but then at the same time he's trying to say that he never thought this would happen. Yeah, which you know what? That's everybody, man. Yeah. Every relationship, of course you, nobody ever goes into a relationship saying, well this ain't gonna end well for me you know right exactly otherwise why would you start it in the first place you know what i mean you're always like everybody always assumes like hey man these stories i've heard about this person it's not gonna be the same for me like right it's not gonna be the same for me this is gonna be a i mean it might be a rom-com but it's gonna end well the first mistake that you make is assuming you can change somebody yeah and i like how the um

how this song ends the same way that it begins, your eyes are cold, I know you'll tell me all, not to fall, I lean against the wall. Yeah, that's great. It's a great song. So let's play another clip from it. Kind of just where it faded out.

This part has a little bit more of the lyrics that we were talking about earlier. do this Great guitar The guitar solo is really I mean it's all just so It's got the smooth Samba rhythm throughout the whole thing

You know It's really good And you know it's jazzy and You know darker way as far as like that kind of this is where I don't I'm not going to sound very

versed in music theory but I'm just saying jazz to me has naturally more of like a smoother kind of darker vibe more melancholy I guess yeah but

yeah it's just it's great and you know I mean I think it's impressive that these two guys were just you know in their mid-20s when this album came out. Right. Well, that's what I always think about when I

think about Kirk Hammett from Metallica. He was 19 when he was shredding those licks on Killem all. You know what I mean? And that's always like, well, shit. What was I doing?

You know what I mean? But we were listening to Kings of Convenience. That's what we were doing. Yeah. So that's our picks. for the songs that you may have missed on Quiet as a New Loud. So the outro song that we're going to play is we're going to try to pick a song that a band member or the group as a whole listed as an influence

or a band that they were listening to at the time that they recorded or wrote the album that we reviewed. So this band this week that we're going to play you out on is the Red House Painters, is what they're called. And Einrich, what's his name? Iric. I mean, that's one way to pronounce it. We were saying Eric earlier, but yeah, Iric is another way to pronounce it. It doesn't really matter.

Somebody in the crowd on this live concert video from 2005, So, you know, a few years after Quiet as a New Loud, but they mentioned Red House Painter. And when you listen to them, you know, you can hear a little bit, a little bit of similarity, but it's just always, I'm always curious to know what bands do my favorite bands listen to because it's like, well, if I love you, what do you love? You know what I mean?

Because most likely I'm going to love the same stuff that you love. so and yeah and so the and the song that we picked um to play is just one of their more popular songs and this song actually came out in 1993 which is crazy yeah um so it's a safe bet that they were into that group before they started writing quite and the fact that that they both said this is our favorite band like both of us yeah they said that that's something that they one thing they agree on yeah and what's funny is that dude they Their last album came out in 2001, according to Spotify. According to Spotify.

Sure. But I'm just saying it's very likely that they were listening to this up into. For sure. Yeah. So yeah. The song, the name of the song is called Katie Song. It might be their most well-known song. But to me, it's got sort of almost a shoegaze vibe, but not.

I wouldn't call them a shoegaze band. but it's got that kind of drone vibe. But it's great. It's like, it's pretty lengthy. But we're only going to play a little bit of it. But it's pretty good, pretty solid track. So I'm going to have to dive in deeper to this group. For sure, yeah.

It's the only song I listen to them. Yeah, it's the only song I listen to theirs. And I liked it enough to keep going. But this is how, this is what I love about music. You know, there's always a rabbit hole that you can fall into. Oh, you know, it's funny, too, if you listen to Red House Painters, and then you go back and listen to Skog, the band that they formed together way back in the 90s, you can hear the influence even more. I'm sure they were listening to Red House Painters even back in the 90s. Yeah, well, that's the bulk of their music is from the 90s, so it makes sense.

Yep. All right, so we're just going to let this play out, and that's going to be it for this. week's episode. Thanks so much for tuning in. Later's on the Minjee. Without you, what does my life amount to? 92% of households that start the year with Peloton are still active a year later. 92%? Because of a bike? Not just bikes. We also make treadmills and roars.

Oh, let me guess. For elite athletes only, right? Nope. It doesn't matter if you're an avid exerciser or new to working out. Peloton can help you achieve your fitness goals. 92% stick with it. So can you. Try Peloton bikes, tread or row risk free with a 30-day home trial. New members only. Not available in remote locations.

See additional terms at onepellaton.com slash home dash trial. By now, you know that sound. It's the sound of the Home Depot. But what about those sounds? Those are the sounds of an LG wash tower with ultra-large capacity serving up a powerful yet gentle clean in just 29 minutes. making this the sound of savings on the best appliance brands. The Home Depot.

How doers get more done. Get up to 25% off the LG wash tower with ultra-large capacity and reduced wash time. Pricing valid January 5th through January 25th, 2023. Gastrower Extra, US only, see store online for details.