Now Konradsen harmonies for you!

Pitchfork gave Konradsen’s 2019 debut a 6.8. The reviewer, Hannah Jocelyn, kept coming back to one word: meander. She used it three times. The songs meandered. The production meandered. Even the duo’s approach to folk music seemed to meander without arriving anywhere in particular. It’s the kind of review that’s almost worse than a pan because it acknowledges something is there, just not enough of it.

Seven years later, Jenny Marie Sabel and Eirik Vildgren are still making the same kind of music. Still layering field recordings over piano. Still letting songs breathe and wander. But sometime between that review and now, the critical consensus flipped. What Pitchfork heard as aimless, Stereogum now calls intentional. What seemed like an atmosphere covering for thin songwriting now reads as a deliberate aesthetic choice.

What happened? Well, the pandemic sent them back north. Sabel returned to Storfjord, built a cottage, and started teaching elementary school. Vildgren went to Senja, an island off the coast, and raised a family. They kept recording, but the music became more embedded in daily life. Family voices show up in the songs now. Kitchen sounds. Fragments of home movies. Not as decorative touches but as actual structural elements.

The 2024 album Michael’s Book on Bears feels more grounded and more confident than the debut. Recent collaborations with Gia Margaret and Christian Beharie show they’re willing to push into new territory. Efficiency, their 2025 single with Beharie, has what Stereogum called a “hard-edged, almost sinister” quality that would’ve been unthinkable on Saints and Sebastian Stories.

From Northern Norway to Oslo: The Konradsen Origin Story

Sabel and Vildgren met in high school in northern Norway. She was from Storfjord, and he was from the island of Senja. Both places sit above the Arctic Circle, where winter means months of darkness and summer brings the midnight sun. They started making music together as teenagers, the way a lot of people do in small towns where there’s not much else to do.

After high school, they both moved to Oslo for university. That’s where Konradsen really started. Oslo in the mid-2010s had a thriving indie scene, but it also offered the anonymity that small northern towns don’t. They could experiment without everyone they’d grown up with watching.

The early recordings were sparse. Piano, voice, subtle electronics. They started uploading tracks online, and something connected. By 2018, they had enough material for an album and enough attention to get signed. Cascine, a New York-based indie label, released Saints and Sebastian Stories in May 2019.

The album title references both Catholic saints and a friend named Sebastian. That mix of the sacred and the mundane shows up throughout their work. Sabel’s voice stays quiet even when the songs build. Vildgren plays multiple instruments but never clutters the arrangements. The production features sounds from their lives: conversations, footsteps, weather, and doors closing.

Saints and Sebastian Stories: A Debut That Divided Critics

The album won a Spellemannprisen in 2019. That’s Norway’s Grammy, basically. For a debut from two people in their early twenties, it was significant recognition. Norwegian critics embraced it. International response was mixed.

Pitchfork’s Hannah Jocelyn gave it a 6.8 and wrote that the duo “prioritizes production over songwriting.” She called it “meandering” multiple times. The production was “warm and cozy,” but the songs beneath it didn’t live up to the atmosphere. She wrote: “Throughout Saints and Sebastian Stories, Konradsen’s simple songwriting gets tangled up in its own production.”

Other critics were kinder. The Line of Best Fit praised the album’s intimacy. The Quietus called it “quietly radical.” But that Pitchfork review stuck. When you’re a new artist trying to build international recognition, a lukewarm review from the most influential music publication matters.

The live performances told a different story. “Baby Hallelujah,” one of the album’s standout tracks, regularly featured eight or nine musicians on stage. String players, backup singers, and additional percussion. The “duo” label was accurate for songwriting credits but reductive for how they actually made music. Konradsen has always been a community project. Sabel and Vildgren write the songs, but they’re performed and recorded with help from friends, family, and other Oslo musicians.

That community approach shows up in the recordings, too. You can hear multiple voices in the background of many tracks. Not singing, just talking, laughing, living. It’s the kind of detail that either draws you in or feels precious, depending on your tolerance for lo-fi folk aesthetics.

The Pandemic Return: Trading Oslo for Northern Light

In 2021, Sabel and Vildgren both moved back north. The pandemic was part of it, but they’d been thinking about leaving Oslo anyway. City life has its advantages, but after a few years, people miss home. Or maybe they just got older, and their priorities shifted.

Sabel moved to Storfjord, a town with a population of around 2,000. She built a cottage by hand. Well, with help, but she did a lot of the physical labor herself. She started teaching at the local elementary school. Music became something she did around the edges of a full life instead of the center of it.

Vildgren went to Senja, the island where he grew up. He and his partner started a family. Island living in northern Norway means you’re committed to the place. Ferries run regularly, but you can’t just hop on the metro to catch a show or meet up with collaborators. You have to plan everything.

They kept writing music. Kept recording. But the process changed. No more last-minute studio sessions with Oslo scene veterans. No more dropping by someone’s apartment to work on a vocal arrangement. Everything had to be intentional because everything required coordination. Emails replaced spontaneous collaboration. Recording sessions happened when Vildgren could get to the mainland or when Sabel had school breaks.

The music from this period sounds different. Less polished, maybe. More patient, definitely. They weren’t in a hurry anymore.

Michael’s Book on Bears: Homecoming as Creative Act

Michael’s Book on Bears came out in October 2024 on 777 Music. The title references Mikael Niemi’s novel Popular Music from Vittula, a coming-of-age story set in northern Sweden near the Finnish border. The book is about growing up in a place most people leave, about the pull between local roots and wider ambitions.

The album feels settled in ways the debut didn’t. Opener “Take It From Me” builds slowly around piano and Sabel’s vocals before string arrangements lift it toward something bigger. The production still features field recordings and ambient sound, but they’re integrated more naturally. Less like decorative elements, more like part of the song structure.

“Dice” might be the album’s most straightforward pop song. It has an actual hook, a clear verse-chorus structure, and momentum. “Give It Back to the Feelings” goes the opposite direction, sparse piano, whispered vocals, barely-there percussion. The album moves between these poles without feeling scattered.

Critics who dismissed the debut came around. Stereogum wrote that the album was “more grounded and confident.” The Guardian gave it four stars. Even publications that liked Saints and Sebastian Stories noted the growth. Uncut called it “a more focused and emotionally direct record.”

Part of that comes from lived experience. Sabel and Vildgren were 22 when the debut came out. They’re nearly 30 now. They’ve built houses, raised kids, held down jobs outside music. The songs reflect that. Less youthful wondering, more adult reckoning.

The album sold better than the debut in Norway and did okay in other Nordic countries. It didn’t break through internationally, but it consolidated their reputation at home. Sometimes that’s enough.

The Collaboration Era: Gia Margaret and Beyond

November 2024 brought “Nick of Time,” a collaboration with Chicago-based artist Gia Margaret. Margaret makes similarly intimate music, sparse arrangements, quiet vocals, and atmospheric production. She’s dealt with health issues that affected her voice, which pushed her music in more instrumental directions for a while. Her 2024 album Romantic Piano was exactly what the title suggests.

“Nick of Time” pairs Sabel’s vocals with Margaret’s instrumental sensibility. It’s gentle but not fragile. The production feels like both artists had equal input rather than one guesting on the other’s track. They recorded it remotely, trading files back and forth, which is how most collaboration happens now.

The Beharie partnership goes deeper. Christian Beharie is an Oslo-based artist who shares Konradsen’s interest in blending electronic and acoustic textures. “Efficiency,” released in early 2025, started as a commission for a short film. The brief asked for something inspired by jazz singer Solveig Slettahjell’s version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Borrowed Time.”

The result sounds darker than typical Konradsen. Beharie’s influence shows up in the song’s structure; it’s less linear, more willing to sit in discomfort. The live performance video, filmed in a private home in Oslo, features seven musicians creating a dense, layered sound that shifts midway through. Stereogum described it as having a “hard-edged, almost sinister turn.”

Lyrically, the song is about long-term love. Not the passionate early phase but the later years when you see each other clearly, flaws and all, and choose to stay anyway. The efficiency in the title refers to that kind of mature affection; it’s not about fireworks, it’s about showing up consistently. Not romantic exactly, but real.

Why Konradsen Matters: The Art of Deepening

Many artists chase growth through expansion. Bigger productions, more ambitious concepts, collaborations with famous names. Konradsen went the other direction. They got smaller and more specific. They moved away from the music industry’s center, literally and figuratively, and kept making the same kind of music they always made. Just better at it.

That’s harder than it sounds. Most artists who move back to their hometowns either stop making music or their work becomes nostalgic. Konradsen avoided both traps. The music isn’t about longing for the past. It’s about living in the present in a specific place. Northern Norway isn’t romanticized. It’s just where they are, with all the limitations and freedoms that bring.

Comparisons to other artists usually land on Sufjan Stevens, especially his quieter work. Both use field recordings and personal ephemera. Both make folk music that incorporates electronic elements without feeling like fusion for its own sake. The difference is scale. Stevens makes grand conceptual statements, albums about states, about grief, about faith. Konradsen makes small observations that accumulate into something larger.

Sigur Rós is another reference point, mostly because they’re also Nordic and atmospheric. But Sigur Rós aims for the sublime. They want to overwhelm you with beauty. Konradsen just wants to invite you in. The intimacy is the point, not a means to some larger emotional catharsis.

Maybe the closest comparison is The Staves, the British sister trio who make similarly intricate, quietly ambitious folk music. Both acts understand that sophistication doesn’t require volume. Both prize restraint over bombast. Both have been criticized for being too subtle, and both kept doing what they do until the critics caught up.

Essential Konradsen: Where to Start

If you’re new to Konradsen, start with Michael’s Book on Bears. It’s their most complete statement so far. The production is polished enough to be accessible, yet it retains the homemade quality that defines their work. “Take It From Me” and “Dice” are good entry points.

Then go back to Saints and Sebastian Stories. Knowing what came after makes the debut more interesting. You can hear them figuring out their aesthetic in real time. “Baby Hallelujah” and “Television Land” are the standouts. The Spellemannprisen win makes sense once you hear those tracks in full.

For the collaborations, “Nick of Time” with Gia Margaret shows their gentler side. “Efficiency” with Beharie shows they can push into darker territory. Both are worth hearing even if you’re not familiar with Margaret or Beharie’s solo work.

The vinyl releases are well-pressed if you care about that. Saints and Sebastian Stories came out on Cascine and is still in print. Michael’s Book on Bears is available through 777 Music’s Bandcamp. Both include download codes if you want digital files too.

Streaming works fine for Konradsen. The production is detailed enough to reward good headphones, but the songs hold up on laptop speakers, too. They’ve said in interviews that they don’t have strong opinions about how people listen. They just want people to listen.

Live performances add another dimension, but they don’t tour extensively. Most shows are in Norway or other Nordic countries. Occasionally, they’ll do a short run through Europe. North American dates are rare. If they come to your city, go. The community-music approach translates well to the stage.

The Long Game

Seven years from debut to vindication is a long time in music. Most artists either break through fast or fade away. The middle path, steady growth, gradual recognition, and incremental improvement, is harder to sustain. It requires patience from the artists and from listeners willing to pay attention over time.

Konradsen chose that path, maybe accidentally at first but definitely on purpose by now. They’re not trying to be the next big thing. They’re trying to make good music in a place they love with people they care about. That sounds simple, but it’s increasingly rare.

The industry wants constant content, algorithmic optimization, and viral moments. Konradsen offers the opposite. Albums years apart. Sparse social media presence. Songs that reveal themselves slowly. It’s a bet that some people still want that, that quiet and careful can compete with loud and immediate.

So far, the bet seems to be paying off. They’re not famous, but they’re making a living. They have an audience that’s small but devoted. They’re getting critical respect without chasing trends. That’s probably as good as it gets for most artists, and they seem fine with it.

The meanders weren’t aimless after all. They were just taking the long way home.