The Kings of Convenience

Last night I found myself listening to the Kings of Convenience again. We all have artists who are special to us. We may set them aside for months or even years, but we always come back to them. They're like an old friend we don't hear from for months on end. But when we get that call or make that lunch date, everything falls into place. I know this is how it is with many of my old friends, and we don't mind things being this way.

I first discovered the Kings of Convenience back in 2006 through Shilough Hopwood, who is in a band out of Pennsylvania called Honeychurch. His band, by the way, has an amazing album called Makes Me Feel Better, which is one of my favorites. My favorite time to listen to this album is on cold winter nights as I drive home from work. It beautifully harmonizes with a pink December sky and an empty, snow-covered highway.

Shilough and I corresponded a few times on MySpace, and he mentioned some of his musical influences. One of the bands he mentioned was the Kings of Convenience, and since I noticed we had similar musical tastes, I decided to check them out. This was a good decision.

Erlend and Eirek beautifully complement one other. Their voices blend together so perfectly that I often have difficulty figuring out if Erlend or Eirek is singing the high part. Their vocal harmonies and restrained acoustic guitar arrangements are uniquely powerful, and they allow me to intricately couple past moments in a collage of memory and melody.

To put it strangely, their music is a certain form of silence, in my opinion. And like silence, it maintains a power that lurks in the spaces between sounds. When I play one of their albums, it is as if I no longer inhabit time, and I am no longer history's slave, burdened by such concepts as "action" and "progress." It is a fleeting period of pure contemplation, in which I rely on memory and melody alone to sustain me. Mystics might call this phenomenon "ecstasy," and perhaps this word is most fitting.

I remember the first time I listened to their remake of a-ha's "Manhattan Skyline." I felt like I was saying goodbye to a close friend, which I have done from time to time. A few winters ago, I said goodbye to a friend I thought I would see again, but I must have misjudged the moment. We haven't spoken since, and I have no reason why. This song reminds me that sometimes goodbyes can be strange and sad; other times they can be happy or even hopeful. But regardless of the nature of the goodbye, we are not necessarily granted the satisfaction of knowing we are surrounded by order and harmony. All too often we are not, and things don't make sense.

But even if things don't make sense, we always have musicians like the Kings of Convenience and Honeychurch to bring clarity to moments that aren't very clear. Music is a way to gain insight into deeper truths that escape the logic of our everyday lives, an idea that Arthur Schopenhauer understood very well.

The Kings of Convenience's latest album, Declaration of Dependence, is a brilliant exercise in minimalism. It also taps many of the themes I come across in my own reading and writing. I often find that I am drawn to works of art—or even people—who loosely fit into a broader context in my life. And this is why life makes the most sense—in other words, it is the least senseless—when I view it as an ongoing project in which I pull together people and works of art that give my life a certain coherence. The project might end when we die, or it might continue through the work of others. For example, when I refer to Schopenhauer, his project continues in spite of his absence. As an atheist, this is the best meaning of eternity I can give.

When my grandmother was dying, I listened to Neil Halstead's Oh! Mighty Engine in the middle of the night by her bedside. Now, whenever I play the album, I think of her and what she meant to me. I don't exactly know where Declaration of Dependence fits into my life's soundtrack. But I'm not anxious for an answer; sometimes there isn't one.