Eirik and Erlend met at school in Bergen, Norway and first performed together in the rock band Skog before breaking off and forming a duo in 1999. Their unimprovably titled 2001 debut, Quiet Is The New Loud, made them inadvertent trailblazers of a new wave of intimate, acoustic music. “We told our record label we’d need two weeks and it took three months, and then it just went downhill from there,” Eirik laughs. Riot on an Empty Street came out in 2004 and Declaration of Dependence in 2009.
Both men have a wry sense of humour and a winning emotional frankness, but from the start, they had very different aspirations. Eirik loved the studio while Erlend craved the road. Eirik chose to stay in Bergen and start a family (he has three children) while Erlend preferred to travel the world. He toured clubs as a DJ, solo artist, and frontman of the pop group the Whitest Boy Alive until he developed tinnitus a decade ago, but the wanderlist remains.
“I tend to diagnose people,” says Eirik, who has a degree in psychology. “Erlend has this condition called neophilia: he’s in love with new experiences. I’m in love with discovering new qualities within what I thought I already knew.”
“We have two completely different ideas of how to live life,” agrees Erlend. “That’s what makes it difficult. If we were both nomads or both family men, it would be much easier. But we’re still together!”
