Two way monologue

Welcome to first post of the rest of my Substack!

I’ve been quietly marveling at the Substack output of some of my contemporaries and colleagues on here. Now I’m diving in. I promise my postings will be sporadic and vary greatly in length. But I have been missing an outlet to connect more directly and personally with those that follow what I do and create. And so, here we go!

Two Way Monologue cover photo shot by Mick Rock in NYC, December 2003.

A few weeks ago I listened through the newly remastered Two Way Monologue album. It’s the first time I’ve heard the album in one sitting since we finalized the recording sometime in 2003. From Love You to Maybe You're Gone. And beyond. If you’ve been with for a minute, you may recognize Two Way Monologue as my second album. A follower on Instagram reminded me that it came out March 9th, 2004. On October 11th, 2024, I’m reissuing the album on vinyl with some never-before-shared bonus tracks. This post will mainly be about those tracks and that time in my life, and how it relates to the here and now

And what a trip it’s been, from Monologue to Avatars, basically. My immediate impression upon hearing TWM again confirmed my notion that these two albums are some kind of kindred spirits — only separated by nearly twenty years of life. Hearing Two Way Monologue now I could feel myself aching and stretching towards another sense of freedom and another level of expression in music. It was something I couldn't quite grasp as the time — a need for more space, more adventure and clarity of emotion, channeling a more esoteric state of mind. If I don't quite feel that I achieved any or all of this, I say so with the sense that I did achieve something else worth capturing. The album strives for expressions way beyond my reach at the time, especially in terms of words and singing. To me it sounds like I’m wrestling both my limitations and my abilities. I'm not quite sure what was most frustrating to me at the time: all that came so easy, or everything that was so hard-won. 

There's a beauty and brutal honesty to these very visible growing pains, and my continuous project of self-liberation, agency and identity through music and performance. Hearing it again now, in hindsight, with extra warm sonic clarity — remastered by Jørgen Træen, who mixed and co-produced Two Way Monologue back in the day — was overwhelming and grand.

And as it turns out, I had reunited with Jørgen on some of Avatars Of Love just a few years ago, so us revisiting Two Way Monologue together was maybe just another full circle moment. 

I remember interviewers often asking me at the time: is this thematically a concept album, what with the title and several songs depicting various failures to communicate? I hadn't even given it a single thought. One could argue that I was not yet thematically conscious. I just wrote one song after another. I had landed on the album title, cause it was such an obviously strong song title, and everything else had felt more or less contrived. I remember threatening my label that I’d name the album «I wish I were you, Scooby Doo». I don’t think I was joking. In the end I was wise enough to realize Two Way Monologue would make the best album title. But not wise enough to have made the connection that seemed so obvious and intentional to everyone else; that Two Way Monologue was a collection of songs about the struggle to express oneself and communicate with clarity in real life. 

Some of these songs were written right after I had finished recording my debut, Faces Down, while anxiously awaiting the end of my high school years so Faces Down could come out and life could begin. Soon thereafter I found myself touring the world and basking in the newfound attention of a global audience. And just as I thought things might wind down so I could start recording the next one, the US label Astralwerks decided to release my debut in North America, a full year after it had been released in Europe and Asia. 

I was 19 and a pretty strange combination of calm, cool and extremely ambitious and driven in terms of all that was going on career-wise at the time. The interest from the US took me by delightful surprise. For any Norwegian artist in 2002, the US seemed a dimension entirely out of reach, a sphere as distant as any galaxy out there. And there I was, on a plane to NYC for the first time, straight from the first few weeks of trying to record Two Way Monologue at home in Bergen. 

When I first courted US and Canadian audiences with songs from Faces Down, the songs that were to become Two Way Monologue remained my little secret. But as I continued touring the USA and Canada throughout 2003, first opening for Nada Surf, then Jason Mraz, I started trying out some of the new songs in concert. I remember doing It's Over, with Ed Harcourt on piano. Days That Are Over had been with me a while, I wrote that in my hotel room after shooting my first ever music video, for You Know So Well, in Oslo, fall of 2000. Wet Ground was written around the same time, while I still lived with my mom and stepdad, and ended up on Two Way Monologue in the shape of my solitaire home demo recording, captured as soon as I had received my first ever songwriter’s royalty check and was able to get a mortgage from the bank to buy my own apartment. I was living, if not the dream, a dream.

In Duper Studio, recording Two Way Monologue, fall 2002.

Other songs on the album were last minute add-ons and bursts of inspiration: towards the end of the sessions we felt like the album could use a couple of songs that were more structurally and emotionally direct. In response, I quickly wrote On The Tower, Track You Down and It's Our Job, sometime in January of 2003. The latter two recordings maintained a lot of elements from my ramshackle home demos paired with my band of musicians. While it’s hard for me to imagine the album without these three songs at this point, I still sometimes feel these and other lyrics might have benefited from another round of considerations and rewriting. But that’s the beauty of making a record: it remains a document of both your abilities and limitations, neither of which you were completely aware of at the time. 

The addition of those three songs meant that other key tunes that had been in the mix had to be excluded from the album. One of them was, in my mind, supposed to be the centerpiece, no less. But the excitement and self-confidence with which I had written the song gradually evaporated with each attempt we made at recording the song. By the time we were mixing the album, September Something was not even finalized, and remained incomplete and alone on my hard drive. Until now! 

Sifting through the archives and vaults for this reissue, I was reminded of September Something’s existence. I remembered the burst of inspiration I felt at first, and the humiliating disappointment I felt as I realized it was nobody's favorite, not even my own, and certainly not with those lyrics. Rediscovering it now I could sympathize with what the original lyrics were trying but failing to express. And I felt compelled to give my old self a hand. I tasked my former guitar player Kato Ådland with rearranging and finalizing the original recording, using as much as possible from the 2002 sessions, including my old vocals where possible. Kato was essential to making Two Way Monologue happen, far beyond his role as my guitar player at the time. He went above and beyond to try and understand my knotty visions for these songs and recorded all the band demos at his studio. We've worked together ever since. In order for me to want to share September Something with the world, the lyrics would need a lot of help and revisions. I gave it another go, wanting to fulfill my intentions from back then, with the added luxury of time, growth and perspective. The lyrics were originally an attempt at a cheeky self-referential, self-deprecating, self-commenting tale of my life thus far, but it was all over the place and felt awkward even then. Returning to it now, I tried not to overthink it, and leave some of the awkwardness in. It feels good to have been able to free the song of its composer's original failure to rise to the challenge. And to get to unite my 2002 voice with the sound of my current self, as we trade lines and harmonize, 22 years apart. 

And if you get to the end of it, you may recognize a piece of music that in fact did survive this song, and went on to be heard by more people than probably anything else that actually ended up on the Two Way Monologue album… 

Discovering the music of Prefab Sprout in 2001 was the single biggest influence on my songwriting on Two Way Monologue. Their music changed my whole outlook on what I was trying to do as a writer, and deeply spoke to me as a musician, teenager, son, boyfriend, dreamer, ego… Prefab was everything. Chief-songwriter Paddy McAloon captured it all and continues to inspire my work to this day. I consider him one of the finest songwriters alive at this moment. Among the many songs inspired by this initial rush of Prefab-inspiration was a song called Rejection #5. A song that's — to put it mildly — neither the greatest song ever written, nor anywhere near the greatest song I've ever written (I’m actually curious to know what song holds that title, in your opinion). It must’ve made sense at the time. I remember it feeling new and meaningful. In retrospect I see it pointing more towards my fourth album, Phantom Punch, than anything else.

I was so in awe of the nervous energy exhibited on the debut album by Prefab Sprout, Swoon, that I reached out to their bass player, Martin McAloon, asking if he'd be able to replicate some of that vibe on my recorded attempt at early Prefab-anxiety. He was gracious and game, and recorded his part at home in Newcastle. As I received his recording, I was swooning beyond belief! And although the song was not quite up to snuff — and I was not quite ready to embody this nervous excitement and energy yet — I've always treasured having a demo lying around with Martin McAloon playing beautiful fretless bass. It's time you all hear it.

Never before published outtake from the Mick Rock session in NYC Dec 2003.

Another vault-discovery was the demo of a song I had completely forgotten about, You Are Impossible. I believe this was another one that I wrote and recorded in my new apartment, trying to come up with a few more songs for the album, in January 2003. For some reason I never played this one for my band or my producers, and it remained forgotten by all, even myself. When I recently found it on a dusty CD-R, it was the first time I got to experience hearing one of my own songs without having any recollection of writing it. It was quite the strange sensation. But more importantly: I quite liked it! 

And so I decided to task my current keyboardist Alexander von Mehren and bass player Chris Holm with recording, arranging and producing the track. I asked them to be faithful to the spirit of my 2003 demo, and to keep in mind everything they remember about the Two Way Monologue era and sound. And they would know: they were regulars at my shows back then, two years my juniors, attentively fan-boying when Two Way Monologue came out. Since 2011 I've had the pleasure of playing with the two of them, and Dave Heilman (who you'll also hear on drums on this recording), on stage and on my albums since then. We are also joined by old friends, singers Julian Berntzen and Nathalie Nordnes, who both sang on the original TWM album and were important new people in my life around the time all of this went down.

I chose to leave the You Are Impossible lyrics exactly as they were, and sang the song at the best of my 2024 abilities. I don’t understand all the words, or even all the melodic leaps and transitions 2003 me chose to make, but I stand by that guy. My voice has changed, and hearing it on the 2003 demo — and pretty much all of Two Way Monologue — I was struck by how polite, gentle and bird-like I sounded back then. It was another strange time in my life. I can never go back, but I am more than happy and proud to revisit.

The Two Way Monologue 20th Anniversary remaster can be pre-ordered from the US store, or the Nordic store.

In the web stores you’ll also find pre-order options for two new songbooks: a Two Way Monologue songbook and an Avatars Of Love songbook. These are the first two in a series that will cover all my albums.

There will be just a handful of shows to celebrate and commemorate the Two Way Monologue era, in the US, Japan and UK. Because I am busy working on the next one, there will be no further touring this year.

But with this first attempt at Substack, I do hope we can remain in touch. Thanks for reading and listening on. And if Oct 11 seems far away, you can listen to You Are Impossible as many times as you like in the meantime!

SL

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