K S CHOICE are certainly not your orthodox rock outfit. Formed by a songwriting brother and sister in their home town of Antwerp, the band take their name from a character in a Kafka novel and play sweet, guitar-driven melodies that sound like they originate not from the industrial heart of Europe but from the wide open spaces of the American mid west.
The nucleus of the band is made up of brother and sister Gert and Sarah Bettens, who unlike certain other sibling songwriters, actually get along very well, thank you very much. They ve been performing together for some time.
Gert is thoughtful on the subject of how coming from Belgium has influenced their music. I think just having the feeling that you re surrounded by a lot of different cultures, who have more identity than we Belgians have, probably makes us absorb a lot of the interesting things happening around us. I think we do have an identity but I don t think it s a very musical one it s more to do with images.
When I think of a Belgian identity, I think of a couple of painters I really like who are respected all over the world, but most people probably don t even know they re Belgian. That s why most Americans probably think of Belgian waffles and all that, he laughs.
Their imminent third album, Cocoon Crash, released on the SINE label (part of the Sony empire), saw K s Choice hook up with legendary producer Gil Norton for the first time. I wondered what it was like to work with Norton, whose previous credits include The Pixies, Counting Crows and Foo Fighters.
It was the greatest experience, enthuses Gert. We had a lot of respect for him before we ever met him, because of the work he d done with The Pixies in the past, and because of the variety of the work he d done. We felt that Gil didn t really change the bands he d worked with. He s not the kind of producer that just wants to put his stamp on an album. He just wants to get the best out of a band as possible.
To these ears, anyway, Norton certainly achieved that with Cocoon Crash, which takes its title from one of the songs on the album, a dramatic affair that sees Gert having a conversation with his maker.
A lot of people, including me, sometimes feel that they are caught inside something and always have the hope of crashing out of it: not to play a role to be yourself 100 percent. I wanted to write a song about that, and it was only after I came up with the term Cocoon Crash that I wrote with the whole song, having some divine entity addressing me while I m lying in bed.
That song is a perfect example of the music created by K s Choice. While many of their lyrical themes are quite dark, the music is mostly upbeat and hugely melodic, with Gert and Sarah s harmonies providing a soaring counterbalance to the sometimes oppressive nature of the lyrics.
I wasn t always aware of it while we were recording but there sometimes is a contrast between the poppy side of a song and the darker lyrics, although I wouldn t consider our lyrics overall to be dark, muses Gert. I think both sides of us, the dark and the lighter side, have a reason to exist, and I don t think the lighter side is only noticeable in the way we write our melodies. I think a lot of Sarah s songs still have that lightness in the lyrics. But we do try to emphasise both worlds existing in one person or in one band. Most bands I listen to are either one or the other and I think that life s a lot more than just one side.
Even though K s Choice have built up a considerable following throughout Europe and the States, Gert is disarmingly honest and humble about his expectations for Cocoon Crash.
You hear a lot of people saying things like You have a healthy base with the first two albums and this ll be the big one. Those are especially record company people saying that, confesses Gert with a laugh, but they do say it often. After a while, we start to think in the back of our minds that this might be possible. This might be it. Then again, I think it s really healthy to craft that feeling we had when we were recording the first album it s already great, we ve already seen about half of the world just by touring with our music, and no matter what happens after Cocoon Crash, they can t take that away from us. n
Cocoon Crash is released through Sony on April 6th.