Moddi [Interview]
Moddi (full name Pål Moddi Knutsen) is a rare and special kind of artist. A Norwegian singer-songwriter unafraid of breaking taboos and capable of conveying intense emotions within the most stripped-down musical formats, Moddi and his recent Boileroom set blew me away to the point that I felt compelled to invite him for a short post-set conversation the moment he arrived at the merch table.
The following interview took place in an empty venue while Moddi was packing up for the night, preparing his gear and remaining merchandise for the next stage of his UK tour. Although I was a freshly converted newcomer to his work and world, Moddi remained patient, passionate, and heartwarmingly friendly throughout this additional and spontaneous demand on his time.
This is what we talked about.
Your music contains a lot of dark elements, but in person you come across as very positive. So I have to ask: What makes you happy?
Moddi: Realism. I agree that many of my lyrics are every dark and might sound a bit pessimistic from time to time. I mean, especially with the arrangements ending in melancholic minor keys.
But the reason I do it like that is because there are things in the world that we need to speak about – at least, that’s my opinion.
Like you say during your set, when you address specific taboos.
Yes – and there are very many taboos that…well, let’s take it from the beginning. When I started writing songs, for example with Rubbles, when I wrote that one it was considered taboo in Norway to mix politics with music. That was something they did in the seventies – and now you’re just supposed to entertain through music. And I thought “Heck no – we need to talk about it all the time! We need to talk about the climate, and what we’re actually doing to this planet.”
So that’s the thing that sparked it off, and then I started writing love songs about the feelings that I wasn’t able to talk about myself, songs about my good friend who had this diagnosis, schizophrenia, and didn’t have a language to describe that with, all the way to…well, House By The Sea definitely breaks no taboos, everybody’s homesick all the time in this world that we have made.
Everybody’s feeling a little bit homesick all the time, so it’s not all about breaking taboos, but yeah, definitely a lot of my songs contain dark elements because people consider it negative to talk about certain topics. Like environmentalism, or the future, or mental diseases. A very wide range of things.
Your question was “What makes me happy?”, and I don’t know if it makes me happy but it keeps me happy, to at least have a bit of openness around these themes.
For me, music isn’t about being happy; I don’t really find happiness, it’s a way of reaching the zero level! I think the word ‘catharsis’ summarises it, at least a little bit. I don’t really find a lot of joy in music – at least I didn’t, but when writing House By The Sea and many of the new songs on the Norwegian album [Kæm va du?] there was a very different approach. It varies from song to song really.
What inspired your first song?
I was eleven years old, and I wrote a song for a “Stop Smoking” contest. I basically stole the melody from a German Eurovision competitor, and put a quite blunt text about my father getting cancer onto that melody.
So that was not the thing that sparked it off; in order to do something right you have to do it wrong a thousand times first. That was a terrible song!
Did it have the same sense of catharsis you mentioned earlier?
No, I just wanted to win the contest! My father didn’t get cancer; that’s what the music was for, for warning him. He did quit smoking, though not because of that song – I don’t think he heard it…
It was more about concern toward your father…
Yeah, yeah.
Forgive me for this question, because I’m very new to what you do and it might sound ignorant: Is this your first UK tour?
We’ve come back to London about ten or fifteen times, but this is our second tour. We did a small tour back in 2010, and since then we’ve left you guys alone! But this time around feels like a new beginning, because after recording three albums as a five-piece band I’ve stripped everything down so it’s just the two of us [Moddi and cellist Katrine Schiøtt] now. That’s been the case since about half a year ago, and it’s turned out okay!
So this is a different approach, musically.
Yes – it’s a much more folky, story-based approach. There’s much less art to it and much less music to it, but more stories and more content really. So it has been a new beginning, but I’ve no idea what’s going to happen next.
What have your general opinions of British culture been over the course of those visits? As someone seeing it through multiple snapshots, how do you feel it’s developing?
I don’t know…first of all it feels very strange because I’ve been writing songs in English now for ten years, and to finally try those English songs out on English people is obviously a big leap. It also makes me much more aware of what I’m doing and saying, what I’m singing, so I might be a little more nervous onstage.
But apart from that, people do tend to ask that question all over Europe, if there’s something special about their local audience, and the thing is that the audience is pretty much the same wherever we go. They’re interested, keen, enthusiastic and talkative people. Today people were quite polite when it came to the racism-related audience participation part of my set, but people are normally very enthusiastic and that’s cool, because I’ve played both in and with bands where the reactions are like “That was awesome music – goodbye!”, whereas with these people, they pick out their favourite song and start commenting on it, and they want to share their music or their opinions or their art in return.
So wherever we go we receive much more love than the love we give, and that’s very interesting in that it happens everywhere we go, from Guildford to Istanbul to Moscow. It’s amazing.
That actually brings me on to my next question, about your song Squares. When you introduced that song, you asked the audience if anyone owned an iPhone 6; do you own one yourself?
Haha! No! I’m never going to get an iPhone!
Do you feel that digital technology is a help or a hindrance?
I would never have been doing music, or be a musician, without digital technology. I come from a small, small fishing village up in the north, where there are no pubs or stages except for the church, absolutely nothing. Thousands of miles from the music industry in Oslo. So for me, it was crucial that I could upload my songs to Myspace when I made them back in 2006, 2007, 2008.
We also had something called Urørt, which was kind of like a BBC Introducing thing in Norway – and I got concert offers from Copenhagen and Warsaw before people had even heard of me in my own village! My village was about a hundred people, and there was no music scene.
[In my village], people just didn’t talk about music. I remember sitting there listening to Sigur Ros and Damien Rice and Radiohead, and others would just listen to the music they heard on TV. There wasn’t even radio, and only one TV channel, the equivalent of BBC One. So digital technology, for me, has been absolutely necessary to promote [my music] and find listeners.
As for that song, Squares, it’s not so much about digital technology as it is about this commercial madness of the modern world. Again, where I come from there are no commercials, the state channel has no commercials, no advertisements anywhere. So when I moved to Oslo, I was completely bombarded with all these posters and public billboards and I can’t pass by a TV screen without just being completely caught by it. So yeah, I’ve found myself lying up through the night just thinking about all those products and designs and ideas, that I need to have them, I need to buy them, I need to get them, I need to know them – [and they’re] everywhere! And especially Squares, it’s basically about Windows 8, because they made me upgrade to Windows 8 even though I knew it wasn’t the right choice for me!
So it’s that lack of choice, something forced on you from above…
Yes! I had to! Because it was new.
There’s a similar thing going on with Apple products too, as you mentioned…
Yeah, and I know many people deal with the same thing. Like, “Why should I be keeping this iPhone 4 when I could have the iPhone 5?” And you’re imagining your life would be so much better…
If you’d ever upgraded to Windows 8, you would understand why I needed to write that song and get the frustration out [laughs]. It’s terrible! I don’t even have a touchscreen on my laptop, so, well…poor me!
Is there anything else you’d like to discuss?
Well, the place wasn’t crammed this evening, but when I was touring in 2006, 2007, I went all over Norway just spending all my money on touring and there would be three, four, ten, fifteen people listening almost everywhere I went. I did it again the year after, and there would be thirty, forty people coming into the concerts. Then there were more people the year after, so it’s a linear build, not an exponential, so I think it’ll be twice the amount of people next time. That’s my prediction!
Well, I’m happy to do as much as I can to help you get there!
Thanks! There’s also a new single coming out on October 31st. All the income goes to the Norwegian Refugee Council, which is one of the best Norwegian aid organisations.
Thanks for coming to Guildford. It’s been a really epic night!
No worries! My pleasure.
Links
The Boileroom official website.
Photo by Jørgen Nordby Henriksen; www.jorgenordby.com.
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