You’ll be glad Kings of Convenience are back after 12 years, but Peace or Love doesn’t surpass the duo’s 2000s releases.
Maybe it’s because I’m an older millennial, but I’ve noticed a lot of bands and artists I’ve written lately about have a tendency to disappear for years before a big comeback. These are all acts that peaked sometime in the 2000s, and then either announced their retirement, went on an indefinite hiatus, or otherwise faded away. I just finished writing about the band Islands, who briefly disbanded without even announcing it.
When the Norwegian folk duo Kings of Convenience announced their fourth album Peace or Love this year, I realized they had not released anything for 12 years, and assumed they were such a case. They put out three studio albums between 2000 – 2010, gained a fair amount of traction, and were seldom heard from during the 2010s. I figured I had just missed some sort of official notice that its members, Erlend Øye and Eirik Glambek Bøe, were going their separate ways.
As it turns out, Kings of Convenience are just perfectionists. Øye revealed in 2019 that the songs on Peace and Love “were written and even performed live, but when we tried to record it during 2016/2017 for a mixture of reasons the results just weren’t good enough.” What’s more, the album was recorded over the span of five years in five different cities, really sealing it as a labor of love.
Despite these years of effort and fussing over recordings, Peace or Love satisfies without really exciting the listener. I’m really glad to have Kings of Convenience back after their absence, yet I’ll admit this album doesn’t surpass their 2000s releases.
Going back to those already-nostalgic aughts, Kings of Convenience were hardly alone among whispering, chilled-out folksy indie acts like Iron & Wine and José González. However, Kings of Convenience stood out not just for the fact that they were a duo (which immediately earned them Simon & Garfunkel comparisons), but also their willingness to take risks. They often complemented their delicate acoustic fingerpicking and strumming with strings, horns, piano and percussion to give a warm, full sound.
Peace or Love takes a half-step here, leaning into strings fairly often with only the lightest touches of other instrumentation like piano. The violin on the single “Rocky Trail” drives the song as much as its guitars, and all of the elements on this track blend together seamlessly to make it a highlight. Strings similarly breathe life into the opening track “Rumors” at its end and add emotional weight to the closing track “Washing Machine.” On “Fever,” which is the only track with a drumbeat, the rolling notes of a piano couple with the guitar line to deliver the best outro on the album. Additionally, two tracks on Peace or Love feature Leslie Feist (who you also probably remember from the 2000s), and her uniquely powerful voice is always a welcome presence. She lifts up the minimal “Love is a Lonely Thing,” and her verses on “Catholic Country” add to the song’s pep. However, she also provided guest vocals on two tracks on the duo’s 2004 album Riot on an Empty Street, making her appearance feel more tried-and-true than novel.
Of course, Kings of Convenience’s bread and butter is just two acoustic guitars with Øye and Glambek Bøe’s voices. This is something Peace and Love has in droves. “Comb My Hair,” “Killers,” “Ask for Help,” and “Song About It,” include nothing except for these basic components. This stripped-down approach is to be expected if you’ve ever listened to Kings of Convenience before, and they once again prove their dexterity at writing the gentlest of songs, even if a track like “Killers” has a bit of a disconcerting feel to it. That said, Peace or Love could have used some stronger guitar melodies. Older tracks like “I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From,” “Homesick,” and “Mrs. Cold” all managed to create a memorable tune with just a handful of plucked notes, and it’s hard to think of anything comparable here.
Aside from their music, Kings of Convenience have distinguished themselves for their lyrics, which I’ve always maintained are some of the saddest and most poignant I’ve ever heard. They sang plainly and earnestly without ever sounding sappy, allowing the bittersweet feel of “Cayman Islands” or the heartbreak of “Renegade” to shine through. Peace or Love is a little lacking here. The title of “Comb My Hair” comes from the line “What good is it to comb my hair, it won’t be touched by you.” It’s a little much, especially when you consider the following line “Why wake up when you won’t be there” would have been a better focal point. On “Angel,” Glambek Bøe struggles to describe a woman’s behavior, before settling on the word “promiscuous.” It’s hard to tell how tongue-in-cheek his seriousness is meant to be, since this is the same band that sang “there’s a little bit of me inside you” on a track called “Me In You” without any irony. “Song About it” has two verses where the subject is quite literally “it” (“Talk about it, dream about it/Joke about it, worry about it”), while the closing track “Washing Machine” has Øye signing the clunky lines “It’s true, I’m more wise now than I was when I was twenty-one, It’s true, I’ve less time now than I had when I was twenty-one.” On the complete opposite, “Rocky Trail” laments a companion who hesitated to ask for help with his burdens, and is the lyrical high point on Peace or Love.
The relative cautiousness on Peace or Love means that it doesn’t have something like Riot on an Empty Street’s maximalist hit “I’d Rather Dance With You,” but that wasn’t the band’s intention here. Instead, their standout quote about this album has been “It’s very, very hard to make something sound simple.” In this regard, there is plenty of simplicity to be found, but it’s the album’s more daring moments like “Rocky Trail,” “Fever,” and “Catholic Country” that will stick with you. Peace or Love is a welcome return from one of my favorite folk artists, but it’s just a return without much fanfare.
Rating: 6/10
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