Northern Portrait interview for Isto é Música.

Brazilian blog Isto é Música has brought an interview with Stefan, in Portugese. Here it is in English:

1) Why Northern Portrait?
I suppose the question goes for the name, which I honestly cannot remember. I think it had something to do with the portrait of 'Palle Sørensen' that we use on 'The Fallen Aristocracy' EP and on our myspace.


2) In the website and in the myspace the band said "Northern Portrait is a band who’s raison d’être is the making of sophisticated pop music". In your opinion, What is sophisticated pop music?
To me sophistication is about taste, refinement and complexity. Mainstream pop music of today is such a broad spectrum of things; sometimes good, but more often horrific - it's basically just a headline that covers everything that's in the charts. The complexity in chart pop is often ruined by the recipe type songwriting, you know: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle eight, chorus, chorus, fade.
Our music is certainly pop, but just not the polished and radio-friendlyfied type, and only very few of our songs really have a chorus in the traditional sense. And I think that type of music demands a little bit more from the listener, a little bit more interest and sophistication: It's something you have to search for, and you can only find it, if you're very much aware of your own taste and so on. The reason why we label our music 'sophisticated pop music' is also because 'Indie' has been completely exploited to sell almost anything, so it really makes little or no sense using that term these days.


3) What's your favourite album of The Smiths?
If 'Hatful of Hollow' is on option, I'll go for that one, but I suppose it might not count as a real album. Perhaps 'Strangeways Here We Come' because of the pureness of the production, and the brilliance of all the songs (except Death at One's Elbow).


4) What is the second best new band from Denmark?
Unfortunately I'm not really that much into the current music scene in Denmark, but I must of course recommend our bass player Caspar's group 'Champagne Riot'. If we look back in time I really enjoy a Danish early 80's band called 'Kliché', a singer called 'Lars Hug', a group called 'Love Shop', and another group called 'Gangway'.


5) Who plays what instrument in the band?
Jesper Bonde: Guitar
Michael Sørensen: Drums
Caspar Bock: Bass
Stefan Larsen: Vocals and guitar