Since upper Norway in early February remains dark both at night and during most of the day, it is impossible for a visitor with only three days in the country to assess time with any accuracy. Add alcohol, plus sleep deprivation to the already extant sensory deprivation, and the task becomes laughable. The vague occasion was the after-party to what had previously seemed the after-party, on the day after the last night of Trondheim's by:Larm festival, and thus it could have been nearly any time in the early or even late morning that we emerged out of cluster of warehouses and, ducking the wind off the snow and the nearby fjord, ascended the steps up into the third or fifth venue of the evening.
Though we had been told otherwise, we did not expect the "biker bar" to which we had been referred to contain American-style bikers, to boast mounted Death Valley cow skulls and wall-to-wall worn-out leather jackets. And we did not expect the Moving Oos, which we knew as a side-project to the New Violators and were our last stop before the airport, to have much to do with "classic rock"-- somewhere, somebody sketchily said, between the Faces and MC5. We expected them to sound like the New Violators: gauzy not bluesy, early 1980s not early 70s, good clothes and a dignified affect, not blue jeans and jean jackets.
OK, that's not quite right. We knew their singer had worked as a truck driver and knew that Per Borten, the gifted music mimic, singer, and songwriter behind New Violators, wrote the Moving Oos' songs too. And we knew that the New Violators' occasional backup singer/siren was one of the two "oos" in that band's three-person vocal front (the two bands also share a drummer and keyboardist). Two of us had even seen the Oos the night before. But who could believe the same people carrying off such a brilliant American/English 80s pop resurrection could be doing the same thing later that evening for a completely different decade, the 1970s??
Anybody who's heard Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones or the Black Crowes or AC/DC-- everybody-- will know what's coming in this music minutes before it actually happens, making Peace and Love a brain-teaser of a good record. How can we still enjoy this stuff: the bluesy lick, guitar or keys; the tambourine hits on the eights; the gesture skyward cued by women saying "ooh"; the multi-tracked, song-title-based chorus? The motorcycle revs on "Natural Man", the "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" interpolation on "Turn Back Time", the "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" intro on not one but two songs, "Prisoner" and "Promised Land"?
One answer is that Peace and Love is less homage than pretty close to the real thing, right place/wrong time, maybe, but right songs. What makes Peace and Love more than a joke or side-project or late night drunken escapism is something perhaps old fashioned or unfashionable, but it has to do with everyone in the band knowing how to sing, how to play their instruments, everyone knowing the exact moment on "Romancer" to get out of the way and let the two women deliver the second chorus by themselves, a shivery and sharp moment of clarity that says, just maybe, these guys know what they're about.
It's easy to be taken by bands you see this way-- foreign place, foreign time, perfect for the exact moment they're stepping out into-- but the Moving Oos have no trouble pulling that space up by themselves, without help. Skeptics beware.
