Halden is a small city in the southeastern corner of Norway, right on the Swedish border. It has a river, a fortress, and apparently, one of the most quietly infectious country bands in Scandinavia. The first time you hear Norma, you might think you’ve stumbled onto something from the American Midwest — the easy sway of the rhythm section, the pedal steel curling around Jørgen Nilsen’s voice, the harmonies that feel like they’ve been sung a thousand times.
The four of them (Nilsen on vocals, Thor Andreas Murtnes-Hatlestad on guitar, Levi Sponvik on bass, and Oskar Rølling on drums) grew up going to the local pub and making regular pilgrimages across the Swedish border. It shows. There’s nothing forced about the way they play together; this is music made by people who’ve been in the same room long enough to trust each other’s instincts.
Their debut full-length Country Catering arrived last Friday, and it finds the band in an expansive mood — willing to follow a song wherever it wants to go, genre conventions be damned. Nilsen sings about social friction and private struggle, but there’s a wry distance to it, a kind of melodic raised eyebrow that keeps the weight from becoming too heavy. Serious themes, held lightly. The record sounds like people who’ve figured out exactly what they want to say, and are having a fine time saying it.
At Gamlebyen Loft in Oslo, three of them recorded Train Track and covers of Aaron Lee Tasjan’s Memphis Rain and Blaze Foley’s Clay Pigeons.
‘Whatever we play together tends to end up sounding like Norma.’
The songwriters Norma keeps coming back to are a telling bunch: Phoebe Bridgers, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Boy Golden, Sierra Ferrell, James Taylor. “They’re all songwriters who manage to write songs that work both fully produced and on the couch with a shitty guitar,” Nilsen explains. It’s a good description of what Norma is after themselves; songs that hold up anywhere..
When it comes to covering someone else’s music, the band tries to honor the original. But there’s a natural gravity at work. “Whatever we play together tends to end up sounding like Norma,” they say. You can hear it in their versions of Clay Pigeons and Memphis Rain; the bones of the songs are respected, but the flesh is unmistakably their own. Four people who’ve spent enough time together that their instincts have quietly merged into something collective.
‘Music is meant to be fun.’
The most valuable lesson they’ve taken from studying other artists? “Have fun with it! Music is meant to be fun. Most of the artists we enjoy listening to are not afraid to have fun or break the rules of their genre.” That