Erlend Øye has spent his whole adult life making very similar music. Whether floaty and light with Kings Of Convenience or floatier and lighter on his own, his whimsical mini-pop anchored by his sine wave voice has been a predictable constant in an uncertain world. For ‘The Whitest Boy Alive’ he’s decamped to Berlin, roped in some hipster mates and hooked up with über-cool Aussies Modular for his version of a German prog-techno project. ‘Burning’ chugs along like crystalline clockwork, ‘Golden Cage’ briefly threatens to be ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ while ‘Borders’ is a dalliance with (gulp) prog rock. And guess what, Øye’s equivalent of turning things up to 11 sounds… much the same as all his other records. No bad thing: as much as going all Kruder & Dorfmeister on us sounds enticing on paper, you’d soon miss the warm bath of reassurance these songs provide.
Dan Martin