Todd & Karen is a Norwegian-Irish duo out of Kongsberg, a mining town about 75km southwest of Oslo, and consists of Øyvind Berge and Ina Verdi-Ruckstuhl.
They were last here in June 2023 with a ditty that concerned itself with the peculiar shortness of the Scandinavia summer.
Easy on the ear, entertaining and amusing is how I summed it up and it’s pretty much the same for the latest offering, ‘Bougie Suzie’.
It appears they are working towards their first long-player, which will be a compilation of their singles to date and entitled, ambitiously, ‘Singles.’
While the previous song was generic in nature this one is much more parochial and written perhaps for a select audience, of locals, possibly family and friends, who will get the references to the oddball characters, who may have appeared in previous songs (Beardsley certainly has).
By that I mean to Bougie Suzie and her up-marketing ambitions, to Beardsley – whoever he is – to why she’s driving a new Tesla, what sort of town Kongsberg is with its streetwalkers and rent boys and girls, why Suzie’s in trouble, and why she doesn’t give a f*** anyway. And why they (T&C) have stolen a road sign.
Indeed, the final shot of the video might even suggest they are Suzie and Beardsley.
It’s all very mysterious. A sort of reverse Stepford Wives transported to Norway.
People sometimes ask me why I feature light-hearted stuff like this when there are battalions of deadly serious Nordic composers out there trying to take on the world but needing all the help they can get.
Well, I feature them, in spades, but I need a break too, sometimes. And all work and no play makes both Suzie and I a dull boy/girl/they/them.
Enjoy!
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/toddandkarenmusic
Twitter: https://twitter.com/toddkarenmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/todd.karen.music/
