Three of a Kind #70

Norway's Kings of Convenience aren't exactly the most prolific of duos, only releasing what, two albums' worth of your actual new material in the past eight years. But they really do make some lovely music when the mood takes them (and when Erlend's not off concentrating on his other projects).

For me they were never better than on 2000's magnificent Playing Live In A Room EP, recorded at Parr Street Studios in Liverpool, from which these three acoustic gems are taken.


Kings of Convenience - Toxic Girl mp3

Kings of Convenience - Singing Softly To Me mp3

Kings of Convenience - Parr-à-pluie mp3

Buy Kings of Convenience stuff

Semi-colons rule; OK?

They're from Bergen in Norway; they're all called Marie or Maria (apart from the one called Embla); they're all about twelve (well, seventeen); they make an agreeable pop-punk racket; they're Razika!

Razika - Love Is All About The Timing mp3

Razika - Commando mp3

(mp3s available for a week)

Razika's MySpace

Three of a kind #17

There are many talented Norwegians whose work I've admired over the years: Edvard Munch, Liv Ullmann, Roald Dahl (Norwegian parentage), Roald Amundsen, the 2004 Women's World Curling Championship silver-medal winning team of Dordy Nordby, Linn Githmark, Marianne Haslum and Camilla Holth, Kings of Convenience, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (even though he played for the dreaded Man U), Jan Aage-Fjortoft and Arne Hansen and the Guitarspellers, to name but quite a few. (I dare say I'd add Henrik Ibsen and Edvard Grieg to that list as well if I wasn't such a philistine.)

Anyway, as you'll doubtless have deduced by now, today's Three of a kind features songs by a clutch of Norwegian artists: the very famous a-ha, and the not-quite-so-famous but equally melodic Harmonica and The Ethnobabes.

I know precious little about the latter two bands - other than the fact that the two tracks included here are both absolutely brilliant pop songs - but a-ha are an old favourite who'll always hold a special place in my affections because they came along right at the high-point of my Smash Hits-reading days in the mid-80s and proceeded to release a string of the most memorable chart-bothering pop singles of the time. Hunting High and Low always reminds me of my first ever teenage infatuation, with a girl called Nicola Ling, back in the summer of 1986. (I never did get to snog her, but then adolescence never was all that kind to me!)

a-ha - Hunting High and Low mp3 (left click)

The Ethnobabes - Make Some Sound mp3 (right click)

Harmonica - Rocking Girl mp3 (left click)

Buy music by today's featured bands here and here.

I'm always on the lookout for a rerun on TV

Despite making some of the jauntiest pop music you're ever likely to hear, Arne Hansen & the Guitarspellers have somehow only gained 927 plays in the history of Last FM (approximately a hundred of which have come from yours truly). To filch a bit of Private Eye vernacular - shome mishtake shorely?

But no, it seems the band really are that obscure, even at home in Norway, where they formed back in 1986. During the subsequent two decades they've released six albums full of songs which bridge the gap between Jilted John and the multi-talented and versatile Sheffield singer-songwriter John Shuttleworth.

To illustrate this comparison, here are some random Arne Hansen song titles: Brand New Parka, Dr. Hansen Goes Pop!, No Fish On Christmas Eve, Internet Girl, Has Anybody Seen My Girlfriend?, Thank You For Rewinding Me, and Iris In Short(s) - to name but several. Not bad for someone for whom English isn't even his first language!

The AHATG songs I've included today are a real pair of gems: (Iris Is) Drop Dead Gorgeous and Barbara Eden, a paean to the star of legendary 60s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. If you like what you hear here (hey, who let that echo in here here?) then there are another 10 of Arne Hansen's personal favourite songs available for free download at the Perfect Pop website, the link to which you can find at the bottom of this 'ere ('ere) entry.

Arne Hansen & The Guitarspellers - Barbara Eden mp3 (right click and 'Save Target As' to download)

Arne Hansen & The Guitarspellers - (Iris Is) Drop Dead Gorgeous mp3 (right click and 'Save Target As' to download)

Perfect Pop's Arne Hansen Page

Buy Arne Hansen & The Guitarspellers stuff
here (CDs/records) or here (downloads)