Biography
Vocalist Per Oystein Sorensen guided Fra Lippo Lippi away from stark goth rock toward an expansive blend of piano-driven new wave and airy jazz. The Norwegian ensemble originated in the late '70s already steeped in the repetitive pulses and gloomy texts favored by Joy Division. Its first release, In Silence, proved so uniformly dark that listeners might easily have confused it with a Joy Division album. With the arrival of the follow-up LP Small Mercies, however, Sorensen’s appetite for pop began to lift the ensemble’s prevailing melancholy. Although that record remained downcast overall, its newly prominent hooks and melodies started to breach the band’s earlier, seemingly impenetrable layer of despondency. On Songs the singer located a more personal style, and the group followed suit. Moving beyond the foreboding timbres associated with Joy Division’s Ian Curtis and Bauhaus’ Peter Murphy, Sorensen delivered performances on Songs that conveyed both exuberance (“Come Summer”) and quiet surrender (“Coming Home”). The words themselves also became more lucid. Fra Lippo Lippi stopped issuing recordings in the early '90s, yet the band returned to the stage in 2000 for shows in the Philippines, where it had scored multiple successes throughout the previous decade. Sorensen has additionally collaborated with Trine Rein.