Kings of Convenience - Boat Behind -- Declaration of Dependence (2009)

Right now I'll be posting a band for Miri, who's been promoting me pretty nicely lately so thanks my love. It took some time to find the band to post about, Alabama Shakes & Bat For Lashes were close to winning the pledge. But in the end we decided on this Norwegian duo. Kings of Convenience is a music project that took me a very long time to like. But now I'm pretty fond of the soft acoustic indie pop/rock tunes they produce combined with some nice vocals of both of them. The album I'll be posting about here is the third studio album they brought out and it dates from 2009 already.  They are actually quite lazy, haha. Only brought out 3 albums from '99 until now. But, I guess, quality is more  important than quantity and it's certainly the case with these two.

The Declaration of Dependence album was the first one I started to like by them, right now I do like all three of them but this one stays my number one. I especially like the first few tracks on the record like 24-25, Mrs Cold and Boat Behind. The rest of the record is quit good but for me it's honestly more of the same so I often skip to another band after a few songs. But whenever I finish the record I don't regret any second of it! Like the band in general it's characterized by soft indie pop rock. If you're not really into this you might find them boring like I did at first. A few re-listens might overcome this issue though, at least it did for me. If you actually do like this kind of music you will really enjoy them a lot and you probably know them already.

The song I'm posting is Boat Behind, first choice would have been 24-25 but no official video available so this is slightly better then. It also is the first song I really started to like from the band which always is an extra reason to post a song for me. I assume most people know them already so I'm gonna stop here, just enjoy!

Official site
last.fm artist page

Rise Against - Swing Life Away -- Siren Song Of The Counter Culture (2004)

Right now I'll be talking about in my opinion one of the best songs and one of the best bands out there. The Swing Life Away song is for quite some time my absolute favorite. Before I had last fm it had around 1000 plays in my itunes library, since I use this platform it is ranked second with nearly 200 plays when I'm done with this post. Only the Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors song of Editors has been played more since I made my account in 2007. 

If we look at the band you have one of the better punk rock bands in the scene, even some melodic hardcore in some songs  if you wish. Rise Against is one of the few punk rock bands I still listen to as mentioned in my post about Yellowcard and it's by far my favorite band in the genre. I Bought 4 of the albums by Rise Against and I obviously downloaded the others. Except The Unraveling which only is decent for me I can honestly say all the albums they produced are at least excellent. OK you need to like the genre, but when you are into the genre I think it's very hard to dislike Rise Against. Vocals of Tim Mcllrath are brilliant for me, he's able to sing very good (something were other punk rock bands often screw up in my opinion) as well is he able to bring the more powerful songs with excellent screaming when needed. Music wise the band is even more Brilliant and last but not least, lyrics do have a meaning with this band, something I absolutely support.

The song is like I said my most played track in general and often used as titles for my blog, the video is lovely for me, since I'm so fond of the song itself I think though. If you're not familiar with the song or the band (which I hardly doubt...) Swing Life Away is one of the few acoustic songs by the band and is featured on a punk goes acoustic album as well as the band's Siren Song Of The Counter Culture album. Enjoy!

Official site

last.fm artist page