No Expectations 094: Almost

15 Danish artists I listened to during my trip to Aarhus and Copenhagen.

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

No Expectations hits inboxes on Thursdays at 9am cst. Reader mailbag email: Noexpectationsnewsletter@gmail.com. The newsletter I produce at my day job with WTTW News (PBS Chicago) can be found here.

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Headline song: Astrid Sonne, “Almost”

Thanks for being here. It’s great to be writing this newsletter again. A month ago, I published The 60 Best Albums of 2024, According to Some Guy in Chicago (if you’re new here that’s probably why you signed up) and then took some holiday time off. 1). I figured that 60 albums is a lot to get through and you probably don’t want a couple dozen more recommendations as you wade through that list and 2). I needed a break. No Expectations is still the most fun writing project I’ve ever had. I love doing it but it’s a lot of work. (Even the most rewarding creative outlet requires a recharging period). So, over this hiatus, I read a lot of books, spent quality time with friends and family, and finally chilled out. Now that I’m relaxed, I’m thrilled to be back.

Without a weekly deadline, I noticed my listening habits expanded a bit. I gravitated towards genres I don’t usually write about here: electronic, jazz, ambient, hip-hop, experimental, and modern classical. I didn’t avoid indie rock (there are tons of great forthcoming releases I plan to cover soon) but I did appreciate having time to unselfconsciously explore new-to-me things. While I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, I want to channel more of this carefree curiosity into the newsletter in 2025. Sometimes a reader or a publicist will pitch me on an artist that “sounds like a No Expectations band” which usually means an indie rock act with pedal steel. And yes, that stuff is totally in my wheelhouse but other things are too. My thinking is if I find something interesting, hopefully I can convince you it’s worth your time no matter the genre or vibe. If anything, changing things up and widening the net will make this newsletter a little more eclectic.

I also traveled to Denmark over the holidays, which is the subject of today’s newsletter. One of my best friends married a Danish woman, so I, along with a couple dozen friends from Chicago and elsewhere, went to Aarhus for the wedding and spent New Year’s Eve in Copenhagen. It was one of the best weeks I’ve had in years. I hadn’t been to Europe since 2009, which was a family trip to Ireland, and I regret not saving up for a vacation there as an adult. From daily espressos at La Cabra or Prolog, too many Tuborg and Ceres beers to count, pastries at Juno, and spending NYE at Bodega Konkylie, the best bar in Copenhagen, I was floored by the place. To spend a week there with my closest buds made it perfect. Plus, the locals didn’t seem to blame us for our incoming government’s plans to take over Greenland.

Below, I’ve highlighted some Danish artists who’ve recently put out boundary-pushing and excellent albums. Back to new music roundups next week (plus, Taste Profile interviews and Discography Deep Dives are coming soon). As always, you can sign up for a paid subscription and tell a friend about a band you read about here. Every bit helps and keeps this project going.

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8 Excellent LPs from Denmark

NYE at Bodega Konkylie before the fireworks. I’m wearing an orange beanie. (Photo by Mathis Schmidt / Bodega Konkylie)

Before my trip, I realized I had a pretty limited knowledge of Danish music. During my metalhead high school years, I loved Metallica, whose drummer Lars Urlich is Danish, and I had a Mercyful Fate phase. I also really dug Mew, the unpredictable alternative rock band whose 2003 effort Frengers and 2005’s And the Glass Handed Kites still get annual spins. While I can claim to be one of the first American music journalists who interviewed the pop star MØ in 2014, the only real music community I’ve written about there has been the constellation of new artists who graduated from Copenhagen’s prestigious Rhythmic Music Conservatory (RMC): Astrid Sonne, ML Buch, and many others featured in this list. Funnily enough, my friend’s Danish wife went to school with a few of these artists, and it was a thrill to talk to her about some of these releases made by her buds.

Beyond the RCM diaspora, there are a few others I stumbled on getting ready for the vacation. Swirling and instrumental psychedelic rock, pitch-perfect indie pop, and head-spinning electro-ambient from a favorite record label, Escho. I should note that while I didn’t blurb any releases from my other new favorite label Konkylie, which owns my new favorite bar in Copenhagen, a couple of their acts are featured in the newsletter playlist this week: Kayak and First Flush. (It’s a good one this week and I’ve now added TIDAL as a streaming service option). I didn’t mention I was a writer at Bodega Konkylie’s New Year’s Eve party but now they know and they shared some excellent releases planned for 2025 that I can’t wait to write about when the time is right.

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Astrid Sonne, Great Doubt

I included this in my unranked 2024 list but it’s a bonafide top three of last year. Only Hannah Frances’ Keeper of the Shepherd and Jessica Pratt’s Here in the Pitch got more spins. A graduate of RCM, the London-based Sonne combines classical viola with skittering electronics and unorthodox melodies. Each time I listen, my fondness for these eerie and stunning tunes grows. A future classic.

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CTM, Vind

A classically trained cellist who spent time fronting the band Chimes & Bells and collaborating with artists like Choir of Young Believers and more, CTM is the project of Cæcilie Trier. Where her earlier material has found her exploring the edges of ambient, pop, and alternative, this project (the acronym is for Cæcilie Trier Musik) finds her firmly in experimental classical. Vind, her latest full-length from 2023, is an immersive, unsettling, but ultimately gorgeous listen. Listen with headphones before bed.

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Kindsight, No Shame No Fame

The sparkling and pristine jangle-pop of Copenhagen’s Kindsight reminds me of Alvvays and Hatchie. The hooks on No Shame No Fame explode and the guitars always find a wrinkle to add edge and angularity to these already-sturdy earworms. There are several killer singles here but “Tomorrow” and “Terracotta Team Song” are the ones.

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ML Buch, Suntub

My big regret of 2023 was not jumping on the ML Buch bandwagon as soon as Suntub, which I now realize is a masterful LP, came out. Sometimes things take a minute to click and I think I needed to be immediately floored by Astrid Sonne’s Great Doubt (which came out a couple of months later) to contextualize this one.

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Causa Sui, From the Source

In a half-joking, half-curious impulse, I googled “Danish jam band” a few days before my flight and landed on Causa Sui’s heady 2024 LP From the Source. Though not a jam band in the American sense of Goose, Phish, etc with improvised setlists and Lot Culture, this long-running quartet makes instrumental psych-rock at its most stoner (or they make stoner rock at its most psychedelic). The four tracks on this LP stretch to nearly 50 minutes but not a second is wasted.

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Fine, Rocky Top Ballads

Of the RCM alums featured in this list, Fine, pronounced “feen-uh” and the project of Fine Glindvad Jensen, sounds the most quote-unquote “American.” While you’ll hear shades of Hope Sandoval and Lana Del Rey, the real rootsiness of the material comes from her bluegrass musician father whose “guitar and banjo playing formed the sonic backdrop of her childhood.” There are impeccably crafted minimalist tunes here, especially “Losing Tennessee.”

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Molina, When you wake up

One of my favorite year-end lists is always Jeremy Larson’s Best Little Moments, where he timestamps and explains his favorite seconds of the year’s recorded music in a spreadsheet. He picked out my most-loved detail about the new album from the Chilean-Danish artist Molina, another RCM alum, which is “guitars that move from pitch to pitch like synths” on the closer “Organs.” That track features her classmate ML Buch and it’s stunning. My other standout moment? The shoegaze-inflected opener “Navel.”

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Clarissa Connelly, World of Work

What I love about this RCM scene of artists who all went to music school together is that while you can chart an overarching “vibe” between them all, they’re all very different acts. The spectral, near-medieval folk-pop of the Scottish-Danish songwriter Clarissa Connelly feels outside the synth-haze of ML Buch and the menacing electro-pop of Astrid Sonne. On World of Work, Connelly channels old-world history, Celtic myths, and a keen ear for making the most of empty space.

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What I listened to:

The No Expectations 094 Playlist: Spotify // Apple Music // TIDAL

The Denmark playlist. Danish artists only (or, rather, only artists from Denmark, based in Denmark, or released by Danish record labels).

1. A Good Year, Horse Vision, “YSL”
2. Molina, “Navel”
3. Clarissa Conelly, “Give It Back
4. Astrid Sonne, “Give my all”
5. ML Buch, “Somewhere”
6. Firnis DC, “Funktion Form”
7. Fergus Jones, ELDO, Birthmark, Withdrawn, “Tight Knit”
8. Erika de Casier, They Hate Change, “Ice”
9. Kayak, “Stories”
10. First Flush, “Tar det tilbage”
11. Fine, “Losing Tennessee”
12. Kindsight, “Terracotta Team Song”
13. Elias Rønnenfelt, “Worm Grew a Spine”
14. Causa Sui, “Sorcerer’s Disciple”
15. CTM, “Summer”

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Gig report: Ryley Walker, Ben Lamar Gay and Quin Kirchner, and Sam Prekop at Empty Bottle (1/5)

I love Ryley Walker. The Rockford-born, Rome-based guitarist and songwriter has been making progressively stellar music for years and it was such a joy to see him return to Chicago for a show with jazz/experimental artists Ben Lamar Gay and Quin Kirchner as well as Sea and Cake’s Sam Prekop open for him. When I started at the RedEye in 2015, I reviewed his record Primrose Green, which I loved then but his later releases were so much better that they dwarfed my enthusiasm for it. I interviewed him twice for VICE—one a straightforward profile before his LP Deafman Glance came out in 2018—and the other time a “Blind Spots” interview where I made him listen to Leonard Cohen for the first time. Longtime readers know that Q&A was an all-timer but I do regret all the hatemail that Walker received for being hilarious. He’s a hilarious, sweet guy who’s consistently put out great records, is a champion for weird, outre, and undersung bands, and still puts on a hell of a show. Special shoutout to Sam Prekop’s set. As a longtime Sea and Cake guy, his foray into modular synth compositions got me deeper into that world.

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What I watched:

A Different Man (2024)

When we first planned the trip to Denmark, my friends and I all booked the same flights. While that sounded like a great idea at the time, to travel together and maybe grab a Chili’s Too El Presidente Margarita before cross-continental airfare, it was canceled the day of our trip so we were all booked on separate, increasingly fraught flights around the world to get to Copenhagen. I thought I got the short end of the stick being booked on a one to Los Angeles (three hours earlier than expected) and then straight to Denmark from LAX. (For my geographically-challenged readers, that’s the wrong way). Amazingly, we ended up beating some of my friends there (who got screwed by a delay and missed a connecting flight). Beyond that hiccup, Scandinavian Airlines ruled. They had Aaron Schimberg’s hilarious and biting 2024 film A Different Man on the in-flight entertainment. It’s a morality play that’s a perfect mix of Sick of Myself, The Substance, and Vanilla Sky but more clever. There’s an ice cream truck-related joke that’s the funniest film moment of 2024.

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Conclave (2024)

As a lapsed Catholic, I’m still fascinated by the church’s regalia, history, and politics. Not since Paolo Sorrentino’s alltimer HBO show The Young Pope have I been so enthralled by a piece of pop culture about the Vatican. Movies are so back. Ralph Fiennes is incredible in it too.

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La Chimera (2024)

My first Alice Rohrwacher film and definitely not my last. While I loved Josh O’Connor in Challengers, this is a much better film and a much better showcase of the actor’s charm. The hypnotic and inventive filmmaking from Rohrwacher and cinematographer Hélène Louvart made me want to stay in their world for another couple of hours. Also, did anyone else notice that O’Connor’s Arthur basically captured Charlie Steen of the band Shame’s whole vibe and fashion sense?

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What I read:

Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy

Tove Ditlevsen is one of Denmark’s most celebrated authors who became well-known in Stateside literary circles 45 years after her suicide when three of her memoirs were compiled and published here as The Copenhagen Trilogy in 2021. That trio, initially published in 1967 and 1971 as “Barndom” (Childhood in English), “Ungdom” (Youth), and “Gift” (Dependency), were so obviously the product of a generational talent that the New York Times included it in their 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list. Despite the often brutal and uncompromising subject matter (especially the addiction-memoir Dependency), Ditlevsen is such an observant, fluid, and commanding writer that it never felt dour or joyless. Gratuitous sidebar: name-dropping her (and getting the pronunciation right) in my wedding speech (Danish receptions feature a Toastmaster and several guests speaking) made me a ton of new friends.

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Jonas Eika, After the Sun

This evocative and imaginative short-story collection from Danish author Jonas Eika excels on the strength of the first entry, which follows a tech worker who arrives in Copenhagen and finds that the bank he is meant to visit has collapsed. He begins an affair with a man who sells derivatives and Eika’s florid and magical realist writing skewer the inner machinations of fin-tech capitalism. While the other stories didn’t shine as brightly as the opener, there are several pieces here worth checking out—like a haunting alien story set near Area 51.

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Olga Ravn, The Employees

Like Eika, Danish author and poet Olga Ravn thrives on the weird and the eerie of sci-fi. In her novel The Employees, human and android workers on a spaceship in some distant future are interviewed by their parent company. Each individual’s, human or humanoid’s, HR conversation is compiled to make up the novel. Though loose in a straightforward plot, Ravn’s writing is vivid, eclectic, and ominous. Bad things happen. There are new worlds, alien artifacts, and mysterious “add-ons” that humans can purchase for their bodies. The only way to piece it together is through Ravn’s disorienting and enveloping prose. I can’t stop thinking about it.