Kommode – Analog Dance Music

Taking a break from the perpetual Norwegian winter of his folky project with Erlend Øye, Kings of Convenience singer Eirik Glambek Bøe enters a perpetual Norwegian summer with Øystein Gjærder Bruvik as Kommode. Their goal is simple: to make people feel good about the current state of the world, with upbeat, poppy tunes as fresh and middle class as a roll neck Fair Isle sweater.

Their debut, Analog Dance Music, is certainly analog, but it’s more of an indiefication of Abba-style disco than a homage to funk and house. Like the LP’s cover art, an obsessively tidy collection of desk drawer items, the album is fussier than a modern home that maintains the appearance of never being inhabited. Clicky-clacky desktop percussion and lazy guitar riffs abound, but well-timed moments of pop bliss appear infrequently. Mostly, the content is slicker than a millennial-focused car commercial.

Kommode’s meticulous approach rewards and bites. The instrumentation is spacious, and the recordings are fantastically mixed. On the other hand, the album as a whole is rather homogenous, with track after track of double-time drums and lit-bro coos about complacent relationships, only occasionally rescued by a fanfare of brass.

The group even acknowledges that complacency may be the album’s biggest flaw, while also stating its purpose is to celebrate "amazing times... the opportunities laid out before you are greater than those enjoyed by any previous generation." We're willing to give credit to Kommode’s optimism: in an age dominated by cynicism and ironic, self-deprecating memes of the lowest quality, a well-crafted, feel-good LP deserves recognition.

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