Kings of Convenience

Kings Of Convenience Concert Tomavistas

Kings of Convenience are back after 12 years with a new album titled “Peace or Love” that came out in June and which they are presenting in their comeback to the stage. In the case of Madrid, after selling out the tickets for their concert in the city months before the date, they will be back for a second round in May 2022 to present in Tomavistas their fourth album. A record that sounds as fresh as spring, and as you know there is nothing we love more than spring in Madrid.

You are probably wondering why Kings of Convenience have taken so long to come back. With a 12-years elapse between albums, you might well assume that there has been some dramatic rift. And when you learn that an album has been recorded  five different times, across five years in five different cities, you might expect something fiendishly ornate, larded with fancy production and guests galore. But neither of those things are true. Their comeback entitled “Peace or Love” is only 11 songs about life and love with the alluring beauty, purity and emotional clarity that you would expect from Kings of Convenience. It’s just that.

Eirik Glambek Bøe and Erlend Øye met at school in Bergen, Norway and first performed together in the rock band Skog before breaking off and forming a duo in 1999. Their unimprovably titled 2001 debut, “Quiet Is The New Loud”, made them inadvertent trailblazers of a new wave of intimate, acoustic music. After that first album, three more were released but with time in between so they both could continue with their lives and take the paths they wanted. Always with calm and without surrender to the music industry’s demands, because they refuse to fit into the framework of how things are done, and this is why they still love what they do.

Now it is time for the next chapter. “Peace or Love” is the sound of two old friends exploring the latest phase of their lives together and finding new ways to capture that elusive magic. If it took a lot longer than they expected, well, so be it. The results justify the process. As Erlend sings in Washing Machine, the final track of the album: “It’s true I’m more wise now than I was when I was 21; It’s true I’ve less time now than I had when I was 21.” There are lyrics you can only write and sing once you have seen how life really is. These 11 new songs have the emotional depth and hard-won wisdom that comes with age.