“My face is stuck, please, how to use/ My IQ low and my shoe heels high/ The day goes by, don’t have much to say,” Norwegian pop duo Smerz sing on album opener and title track “Big city life.”
Declaring that they don’t have “much to say” at the onset of a sprawling 13-track exploration of urban life is a quintessential wink by Smerz (Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt) whose lyrics tend to dabble in both plainspokenness and sarcasm.
Album single “You got time and I got money,” for example, is a stunningly literal ballad about a relationship Stoltenberg formed just after she got a day job. Her new lover, though, was in between employment. “He had a lot of time. And I suddenly had some income in my bank account. And that was it. Nothing more and nothing less,” Stoltenberg shares, laughing alongside Motzfeldt from a sun-filled apartment in Oslo. The song, though, is much more moving than a mere readout of reality. Stoltenberg’s unfussy words and the track’s lush instrumentation creates a space to consider the hugeness of the small, the complexity of the simple.
Big city life is a continued conversation between the Smerz duo, who have already created a thematically and musically varied set of works since 2017 via a debut EP, a full-length album, and a number of collaborations and compositional projects. On this new album, they’ve pared down the scale of their artistic wanderings, choosing to create a poignant portrait of life in their (relatively small) home city of Oslo.
Highlights include “Roll the dice,” which finds the duo delivering a self-affirmation before a night out on the town. “You’re a girl in the city and you shouldn’t think twice/ You take two steps forward, keep your eyes on the prize,” they hum over a beat that features an almost slapstick piano line, atonal and coy. Or look at the smashing fun of “Feisty,” which is the album at its most uptempo. A clanging 707 hi hat melds with a set of strings that could be ripped from aVanessa Cartlon cut. Meanwhile the duo hum about the small, innocuous details of a night of drinking and flirting (“He likes to seem mysterious but really he’s just dumb/ It’s crowded at the toilet, I check my makeup and my bum”).
Smerz’s renewed focus on local tedium was spurred by a major move. They started their career in Copenhagen, a central part of its alt pop scene, which includes fellow artists Erika de Casier, ML Buch, Astrid Sonne and Fine Glindvad (Motzfeldt went to school with many of them at the important Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen).
“We developed our whole musical life in Copenhagen. Everyone we know and everywhere we go has some connection to music,” says Stoltenberg. Collectively, their crew of Copenhagen colleagues became a global musical force, receiving an upsurge of interest in 2023 when Smerz, de Casier and Glindvad all contributed to K-pop stars NewJeans’ EP Get Up (Smerz produced EP closer “ASAP”).
It was time, though, for a change. They moved back to their hometown during COVID. Both were coming out of relationships and thus re-entering single life just as the world was fluctuating between various levels of lockdowns and reopenings. There, in Oslo, they could linger in the specificities of home: its culture, its rhythm, its “grey and green” landscape. And there, they could document their everyday experience in Oslo through surprising, instinctual works of pop reportage.
It’s hard not to connect their deep hometown connection to Stoltenberg’s own exceptional tie to the country. Her father, Jens Stoltenberg, was Prime Minister of the small EU nation twice between 2000 and 2013. Stoltenberg doesn’t speak publicly about her family’s political ties, but her ability to largely avoid the topic speaks to Norway’s vastly different social system: where wealth disparity is minimized by a social safety net and the general social code revolves around janteloven, “disdainful attitude to extraordinary achievements … [or] the Nordic trait of placing the value of equality above all else.”
On Big city life, Smerz streamlined everything, comparing its musical creation to a “band jamming.” They assembled a “library” of a few core sounds: a drum machine, software pianos, synthy strings which sound like they’re plucked out of a ‘90s TV documentary’s score. “These songs were made quite fast, with a focus on the songwriting, and less focus on the sounds and the textures,” Stoltenberg shares. “By working a bit more quickly and not focusing as much on the production, you can capture some spontaneous mood or feeling of whatever state you’re in.”
They found themselves making music in a variety of locations, like Motzfeld’s apartment and even in the library. “It’s very natural [for us to make music in the library], because our music setup is mainly just a computer and headphones. It sets another scene. It’s another type of concentration,” Stoltenberg says.
“There’s something special about making music at a very low volume,” adds Motzfeld. “That influences the music that comes out. It can be a bit more puzzle-like. You’re solving these riddles.” That’s an apt metaphor for how these songs sound, given that they have a certain neatness and clarity to them. Still, though, that neatness shouldn’t be misinterpreted for safety.
The micro-situations they describe still have a deep sense of feeling. And their clear-as-glass words ring with an evocative objectivity.
Stoltenberg shares that moments they describe in their music are chances to explore a level of relationality: how the self intersects with the world writ large. “You move out of a relationship and you feel a bit alone. You move cities and you’re not with your close friends. We had a period in New York, where you can feel very alive because there’s so much going on around you, but you’re alone in a different sense,” she says. “It’s this longing for something that is hard to specify. [It’s] about where you feel energy and life, or the feeling of existing. Sometimes you can find that within yourself and sometimes you need it from the outside world.”
Big city life works well in both contexts: as a meditative self reflection or as a wry soundtrack to hitting the town. Like a city, it’s varied: small roads, huge avenues, skyscrapers, trees. It’s a city you can choose your own adventure in. All you have to do is roll the dice.
Photography: Smerz and Erika de Casier
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