One of my friends once referred to Magnet as “TEH MAGNETZoRZ” and for some reason I thought that was hilarious. We are very silly.

Magnet’s new album is called The Tourniquet. OMG, NEW ALBUM! (Just a note, when I say “OMG” I’m kind of kidding. And kind of not.) My first thought was, “Does that imply massive pain?” Hope not. Or maybe…YES, I love depressing things! I do. You probably do also. YOU DO! Why I’m shouting, I don’t know. There are lots of depressing Magnet songs and it would make me ever so gleeful if he one day made a song about happy penguins just waddling around glaciers, sitting on eggs and puking out food for their babies or something.

Here are some live Magnet songs pulled from NRK’s Bergenfest radio broadcast:

Magnet – Duracellia [removed]
Magnet – On Your Side [removed]

I feel like his performances in the US have been better than the Norwegian ones I’ve heard. Then again, I’m biased. You can listen to some live US performances on KCRW and KEXP.

On a related note, a friend pointed out this article about the success of Norwegian artists outside of Norway. It’s in Norwegian so you probably won’t get much out of it but I tried to read it. I mean, “read” it. I’ve heard Maria Mena’s music but I wasn’t really into it. My brother used to listen to M2M (he likes female pop artists, yup). I like Jaga Jazzist (or is it now just plain Jaga?) but haven’t gotten any of their albums yet. I guess the most popular Norwegian artists over here that I like are King of Convenience, Royksopp, and Sondre Lerche. Has anyone noticed that they’re all on the same label? Holy jeebus. (If you live in NYC, you should go to Royksopp’s show at Irving Plaza on July 17th. Figuring that I’m going, it’ll be the first time I’ve been to Irving Plaza since the last time I saw Royksopp. How weird.)

Ahh, some other good artists: more people should listen to William Hut in my humble opinion. Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herren Band play cool music and they seem to put on awesome performances but I haven’t gotten any of their albums yet (just an EP) and I most certainly haven’t been to any of their shows. I’ve liked the few songs I’ve heard by Bjorn Torske, but haven’t gotten any of his releases either. Kaptein Kaliber make music that I honestly don’t really know how to describe besides that it’s electronic, which is about as helpful as describing something as rock. Oh, they’re good too. I haven’t gotten into many Norwegian female artists (besides Annie) but maybe I just haven’t heard enough.