Like an icy blast from the north blow The Northern Lies from Tromsø to the festival with a whole new approach; Arctic Americana. With a freshly released album ”White Desert Blues” the band have become a little darker and melancholic as they grow from a trio to a quintet.
The music still sets the scene against a cool northern backdrop but the melodies are more emotional and the lyrics darker. Whilst the album ”Midnight Medicine” (2013) was defined by beautiful ballades of frozen hearts, the new songs in ”White Desert Blues” show a band setting their sights on mirkier and sadder shores. Lyrically the texts stem from a deep-rooted romantic tradition of despair as they sing of meetings with death, time, and difficult choices. The vocalist Henry Johnsen´s honesty and directness is just as captivating as before and the band takes new strides in the development of their harmonies and arrangements.
This relatively young band remind you of a 2016 version of The E Street Band (Bruce Springsteen) and Crazy Horse. Both their style and craft retain an earlier fascination with Gene Clark´s and Townes Van Zandt´s narrative approach, whilst The Northern Lies in ”White Desert Blues” give added definition to their own genre of Arctic Americana. The album was recorded in the Autumn of 2015 and released in April this year.
The group won rave reviews for their debut album "Midnight Medicine". The newspapers Dagbladet, Nordlys, Stavanger Aftenblad, Avisa Nordland and Troms Folkeblad awarded them 5 out of 6. "Countryrock in the finest tradition", "songwriters from the top drawer" and "tasty midnight medicine" were just a few of the write ups that followed their debut.