End of year wrap (2) – The Atkins Tent Revival (Norway): Out Here (sample track from Norwegian Brown Cheese Vol. II: Sincerely Yours)

There is just time to wrap up the year with an overdue submission.

I had an entire album to choose from in the case of the now Trondheim-based The Atkins Tent Revival, whose ‘Norwegian Brown Cheese Vol. II: Sincerely Yours’ came out on December 13^th, but I made a point of staying away from ‘Don’t go shittin’ your britches’.

I recall that band leader Ben Atkins’ mantra is “to try to write about things that will make people think of themselves, in both silly and serious ways”, but that’s taking a little looseness a tad too far even for me.

The band specialises in Americana fusion but really does mix things up a bit. I eventually selected ‘Out here’, which he describes as “an Alabama Shakes-y letter home about moving to Scandinavia where no one says hello to their neighbours.”

Older readers (and I mean older) might recall Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America, a weekly 15-minute soliloquy on the state of the old colony on first the Home Service then BBC Radio 4, from 1946 to 2004.

This is Ben Atkin’s equivalent for the 2020s as he writes about the pitfalls and, well, further pitfalls, of shifting from Texas to Buenos Aires and eventually to Trondheim, where

“they got no cops on patrol

And out here I lost all my self control

Out here there’s no one to tell me no

But out here no one ever says hello”.

I won’t repeat any more of the lyrics, which reference “being so goddamn cold”, working as a barman to make ends meet and being made “whole” by seeing the aurora borealis, you’ll have to listen to the song but I assure you they are smart, very smart as Donald would say, and good enough to get him into the new Cabinet as Secretary for Song Lyrics.

(If you listen to it on Soundcloud you get the lyrics as well although you don’t need them as his voice is crystal clear, and ditto the You Tube video, so I provided that link here).

There’s a lengthy rant on the album called ‘Genocide Joe’ that is the Alexei Sayle class and I could argue with him about it all day long but I’m not going to let that detract from my appreciation of his songwriting skills and lyricism, which rank amongst the best I’ve encountered. Ever.

If they can keep this standard up I expect The Atkins Tent Revival to be saying hello to new neighbours right across Europe before too long. Whether or not they answer back is another matter.

In the meantime I don’t think the Norwegian Tourist Board will be adopting ‘Out here’ as its theme song any tine soon.

Find him/them on:

Website: https://www.atkinstentrevival.com/