Those of you who have stayed up late watching ESPN2 may have stumbled across a very unusual bit of television: The Whitest Boy Alive competition. Contestants from around the globe (the middle latitudes, at least) battle in a series of events designed to judge the breadth and depth of their Caucasianness, facing off in contests like Quickest Sunburn, Jumping Inability, Lack of Rhythm, Star Trek Fan-Fiction Writing, NASCAR Identification Quiz, and, of course, hockey.
Apparently I missed the season where Erlend Øye won the coveted golden-golf-ball belt of The Whitest Boy Alive, but apparently the musician is proud enough of his accomplishment to have named his latest project after the award. It's no surprise that Øye was such a formidable candidate; after all, he hails from notorious WBA powerhouse country Norway, and despite being quite poor in the Lack of Rhythm competition, his Nordic skin resembles an Atomic Fireball with the most miniscule of sunlight exposure, and he looks like he'd be an encyclopedia of TNG-era Trek facts.
Øye's pride in his title might fool you into thinking the Whitest Boy Alive is, as the name would indicate, some kind of tee-hee ironic white-kid rap project; thankfully, it's not. After making delicate whisper-folk as half of the Kings of Convenience, a collaborative electronic solo record, and rechristening himself "The Singing DJ" for a well-received DJ-Kicks set, Øye now takes the step of making electric music, "rock," for lack of any better term. Hewing close to the soft side of the genre, Dreams presents a sound that invokes every Scandinavian stereotype not yet broached by this review: socialism-clean, winter-wind crisp, expensive-sounding, and unfailingly polite.
Like the similarly fussy Phoenix, Øye applies each element of his four-piece band with obsessive meticulousness, creating a tight, rhythmic sound that is so unfunky it comes back around to funky again. Reflective of his DJ set's taste for Kompakt-style glossy house, TWBA's drumming is metronomic and efficient, while the bass, guitar, and keyboards gently entwine with drill-team precision, imagining if Kraftwerk had produced Fleetwood Mac.
Whether you find this winterfresh concoction to be electrifying or sedative depends on your temperament, or your thoughts on previous Øye work; all the new-fangled amplification doesn't do much to raise the singer's library-voice volume. Øye attempts to mix things up by indulging a heretofore unknown taste for guitar solos, nothing too flashy, but still providing a bit of fang on an otherwise toothless record. When the guitar spotlights are kept at a messy-chord rhythm-guitar level (as on "Burning", or the nicely inverted progression of "Inflation"), they're satisfying, like intentionally making a mess of a neat freak's kitchen counter. When the solos turn to extended vamps, as on "Down with You", they only magnify the music's hypnotic qualities, for better or worse (mostly worse). Elsewhere, on "Above You", Øye tries to animate his stiff sound with playful keyboards: a crunchy clavinet that successfully adds some strut, and a bloopy synth that ruins the strut by making it sound like they're jamming with R2D2.
Still, despite the stylistic embellishments, Øye can't completely escape his now well-established persona; that same restrained voice, those same detached melodies, the same room left for silence, no matter whether it's set against folk, electronic, or rock trappings. There's still life left in that formula, but transferring it from genre to genre must be getting exhausting-- Øye himself sounds a bit groggy by the drum-less closer "All Ears". The taut, prim pop of Dreams does revitalize Øye's approach for a time, but by the end of the album the novelty is somewhat lost, a promising sound extinguished by the singer's refusal to expand his vocal horizons. Blame it on a conflict of interest: The Whitest Boy Alive contest frowns upon excessive displays of vocal exuberance, and its champion and house band are obligated to comply.
