Unrest

Erlend Øye is the bespectacled one from Kings of Convenience, that ever so sensitive and charmingly twee duo who coined the phrase Quiet Is The New Loud. As the Kings have been collaborating with Royskopp and playing gigs in Ibiza, they’ve got their electronic side, which Erlend indulges here in a jet-setting stylee.

Each tack on Unrest comes not just with a guest collaborator, but with a city location ranging from New York, Rennes, Helsinki, Berlib, Uddevalla etc. As they say, nice work if you can get it. Unfortunately, the tunes buckle under the weight of these lofty ambitions, wearing gossamer thin in a tinny eighties electro pop way without good hooks or choruses to carry the tunes. Distinguished personnel such as Prefuse 73 fail to bring any spark whatsoever to proceedings. Everything is blanded out into homogenous synthy pop, which defeats the purpose of having the roll call of studio whizz kids in the first place. Kings Of Convenience are a distinctive act, and the sooner they get pick-ups for their acoustics the better.