LOCAL STORE - Whatever Time Will Bring

There's a gentle luminosity running through "Whatever Time Will Bring": soft, never intrusive, like certain late-summer afternoons. But it's not nostalgia for seasons past that animates the third album by Norway's Local Store: rather than revivalist pastiche, the record's horizon seems to give voice to an inner attunement with the sound of an era: the musical Seventies, seen not as a repertoire to cite, but as a landscape still inhabitable, alive, current. Perhaps even necessary.

Around the voice and guitar of Bjørn Klakegg — a sixty-seven-year-old who was already the mastermind of neo-Canterbury outfit Needlepoint – moves a cohesive, versatile band made up of Mattias Krohn Nielsen (guitars, keyboards), Magnus Tveten (bass, bass synth) and Tore Ljøkelsøy (drums, percussion), all from a younger generation. Their music moves effortlessly between familiar accents and more elusive references: the songs bring together the lush delicacy of West Coast sound and Seventies Mellow Gold, but also prog craftsmanship, a singer-songwriter streak and a touch of homespun indie charm.

It's easy to get lost in this game of references, but that's only the surface layer: "Daniel" and "Ready For A Leap" weave acoustic arpeggios in a way the more pastoral side of Genesis wouldn't frown upon; and echoes of Kevin Ayers are implicit but recurring, both in the wandering nature of the melodies and in the only-apparent placidity of the songs. "Love", like other tracks, can evoke the frugality of Donovan, but it's above all the timbre of Cat Stevens that keeps coming to mind through Klakegg's gentle, conversational voice.

On a more analytical level, there's a discreet but ingenious approach to chord work: writing that doesn't dazzle with effects, but slips sideways, following unexpected directions. "How You Want Me To Be" plays with sunny, all-major progressions, building a mood that disorients with gentleness. "Core In A Peach" opens with a lulling ostinato and lets it drift on a dreamy breeze, before opening up into a bridge that traces an unexpected harmonic curve, like a thought wandering elsewhere.

Compositional freedom runs wide and deep here, but it reveals itself in small doses. On "From Scratch" the trick is subtle: a perfect slice of folk-pop that gives the illusion of predictable comfort, while quietly steering towards unexpected twists.

Klakegg's remarkable guitar skills never steal the show, but enrich it: imaginative melodic phrasing, memorable without showing off, is backed by a tonal attention to detail that leaves a mark – as in the closing of "Dead Wood", where the radiant solo is carried along by driving drumming that takes on an almost Madchester-like groove. Or again in the already-mentioned "Core In A Peach", which gives the guitar room to soar in a carefree, melancholy flight, in keeping with the album's mood.

This isn't a record that tries to catch you off guard, but neither is it one content with just sounding good. The songs give the illusion of predictability, and instead they open up, veer off, find their own personal paths. It's a rare balance: between immediacy and complexity, between craft and inspiration.

The title, "Whatever Time Will Bring", isn't a statement of intent but a reflection: of a quiet attitude, though not a resigned one. As if Klakegg's writing had long since stopped trying to force things, preferring instead to watch them flow by – and distill from them, unhurriedly, something that lasts.

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28/04/2025