Kindsight - ‘No Shame No Fame’

New album out now - stream

Photos by Elisa Zederkof / Album artwork by Elizaveta Litovka / Bio by Austin Maloney

It takes a certain special kind of band to make a perfect indie-pop song, and Kindsight are exactly that kind of band. The Danish four-piece have mastered the craft of distilling their artistic identity into sweet and scrappy songs, every note and detail carefully tailored so it all falls into place, for music that wakes warm memories and shines with daydreams about tomorrow.

Kindsight (Nina Hyldgaard Rasmussen, Søren Svensson, Anders Prip and Johannes Østlund Jacobsen) announced themselves properly in 2022 with their debut LP Swedish Punk, and promptly headed out on the road to introduce that record to the world, setting off for shows including slots at SXSW and Roskilde Festival’s emerging talent stage. Always unwilling to rest on their laurels, the band have kept moving forward, and are now back with a new album, No Shame No Fame, out on Rama Lama Records this April.

Work on No Shame No Fame started soon after Swedish Punk, with the single “Love You Baby All The Time” emerging as an early song. The band gradually wrote the songs over a year or so, and when they were ready, booked themselves into Studio Sickan in Malmö with producer Joakim Lindberg, just a quick train ride over the Øresund Bridge from their homes in Copenhagen. “We met on the train every day with our bikes”, says Prip, “and then got off and biked to the studio. Bought some food on the way. It was very cosy”. The recording of their debut album had been the first time the band had worked in a real studio. With that experience under their belts, they went into the recording process for album two more secure in themselves, and with a clearer plan for what to do.

They had decided in advance that they wanted to record the songs together live, and so had rehearsed them before heading into the studio – once they stepped in the door, they were ready to go. “This time”, says Rasmussen, “we just played in a room, like we usually do. It was a casual way of doing it, and it made it less stressful, even though we worked more intensely”. “We made sure we had a plan in place before going into the studio”, adds Jacobsen, “and we felt we had written even better songs. It’s about knowing exactly what you want, and feeling more confident. I was just really excited to play on this one. Joakim was great to work with too – he just says what he thinks, and that worked out great”.

That extra confidence, and the energy from recording live together, has allowed them to advance stylistically on the new album. What emerges is a stronger, rawer sound, audible in songs like the bubble rush of opener “Acid Island 45” or the soaring swoon of “Love You Baby All The Time”. The band sound more secure in themselves, and in total control of what they want to do – they can let the songs run loose at times, and drive them where the mood takes them, while always being able to pull them back into something neat and tidy when needed. That extra energy and thrust the live recording has brought to the music has been paired with sharper, brighter songwriting than ever before.  “We talked about letting it be really poppy”, says Jacobsen. Rasmussen’s vocal glitters through the pop-meets-fuzz tumble of “Eyelids” and “Tomorrow”, where the charm of the songs is partially Kindsight’s trademark ability to stir a little melancholy into the mix. The pairing of the two songs that end the album sums it up, with the rapid blast of “Top Ten Things You Need in the City'' followed up by the mind-melting, ever-expanding groove of “Easter and the Boys”. Two very different songs, but two songs at home next to one another, and deftly executed with style and grace.

“I think we’ve tried some new things out in a lot of the songs”, says Jacobsen, “and tried to explore further. It was more about letting go, and relying on yourself, so I could play as loud as I wanted. There’s a lot of energy in that. Allowing ourselves to extend some ideas further, playing louder, longer”. “For me, a big part of the new record is the melodies”, adds Svensson. “I think they jump out really well, and they combine with the sonic shift to being more aggressive, with the guitar feedback and the louder drums. That’s what sets it apart for me”.

The band write all the songs collaboratively, right down to the lyrics, and that lets them bloom in unique ways. Instead of personal narrative, the lyrics lock different pieces together like jigsaw puzzles, giving the songs depth and nuance, and setting them up like little mysteries for the listener to unpick, or find their own meaning in. “I feel like it’s about writing songs about whatever you like, not coming from me, or someone else, but being able instead to pick whatever you want to write about. That’s the fun part I think”, says Prip. “To me”, says Jacobsen, “even though I have been in the factory, and I know who has done each part, I can see the tones of feeling added by each writer, and it still feels cohesive, and one body of work. Because we work on them collaboratively, the songs all grow into shape together differently. It’s like planting a flower and watching it grow – ‘oh, it looks like that now’. We, as a band, watch how the songs grow together”.

And it all comes wrapped up in the title, No Shame No Fame, which was originally, and still is to some degree, a throwaway line Rasmussen said when trying to cheer up a glum Svensson at a recording session. But it maybe carries a little of the spirit of the record too – to get to where you want to go to, you have to cast off the nerves, and the overthinking, and just, as Prip says, “let it rip”. That’s the Kindsight we find on the new album - a confident band, in tip-top form, that know exactly what they want to do, and have the songs to back it up. Making a perfect indie pop song is a tricky art, and making a perfect indie-pop record is even harder. But if Kindsight haven’t managed that on No Shame No Fame, they’ve certainly gotten very close.