Noisy Norwegians Clash With U.S.

The Radisson in Austin, TX is a few short blocks-and an entire universe-away from the luscious chaos of Sixth Street during the city's massive South by Southwest music festival. The hotel's parking garage, Starbucks, T.G.I. Fridays, and general corporate aesthetic make it about as compatible with its surroundings as a Republican in New York for the RNC. Outside, the crowd; inside, civilization. Thankfully, there is a stowaway from the outside world reclining in the lobby: Emil Nikolaisen, frontman for the emerging Norwegian band Serena Maneesh.

Nikolaisen's description of the band centers on serenity. "Of Serena," he says, leaning forward excitedly in his chair, "you can draw serenade, serenity, serene, all these-the meanings, the character, the kingdom of all the meanings. I think that's really important to what we want to say with the band."

Upon first listening, serene might not seem to be an appropriate adjective for the ear-shattering wall of sound this Norwegian five-piece so magnificently creates. It fits, one is inclined to say, about as well as Nikolaisen does with his hotel lobby surroundings-dark eye makeup, an impressive selection of bracelets and rings, and the lace scarf tied around his head clash heavily with the deathly sterile Radisson. Yet the explosive guitar landscapes that were front-and-center at Serena Maneesh's Club Deville show in Austin threaten to misrepresent a band intent on exploring the kind of melody vs noise and order vs chaos dialectics that so intrigued legends like My Bloody Valentine back in shoegazer's halcyon early 90's.

Despite structural and musical symmetries that are hard to ignore, Nikolaisen takes issue-in a characteristically diplomatic style-with the Kevin Shields connection. "I don't mind. People can write whatever they want," he says. "But I think all the shoegazer stuff-it's completely not interesting at all. And it's such a shallow concept. People want a shoegazer revival, and that's fine. We'll play-they can call it whatever they want."

Serena Maneesh's self-titled debut LP doesn't drop stateside until May 23, but a glance at Nikolaisen's musical CV reveals a prolific, globe-trotting career that lends his words a certain credibility that can only come from experience. The question of roots, musical and otherwise, is of particular concern to an artist who must be one of the more reflective in the game.

"I mean, music is so much more nuanced and so much more deeper than categories," he insists. "There's so many fragments, there's so much more. The richness of things..." he says, as his heavily accented Norwegian voice momentarily trails off.

"I think it's much more interesting to go back in time to the solid roots of where you come from and refine it from there," he says. For Nikolaisen, making music is about finding a place of clean origin, a point from which the sound can expand without the creative hindrances of expectations or genre boundaries. "That's how I view my own music-trying to trace back the deepest roots of your character and refine it from there."

Nikolaisen's own roots depict a person who rarely lived apart from music and who could not help pursuing it as a career. The oldest of seven children, Nikolaisen grew up with tight sibling ties and a father who "played church music" as head principal at a music school. "Me and my brother, who sings-we were always really close growing up," he says. "And I remember us sitting on our pots, literally, underneath the sink, hitting smaller boxes. We were always obsessed with all these sounds." Eventually Nikolaisen's parents built a practice space for their music-obsessed children. One of Emil's sisters, Hilda, now plays bass for Serena Maneesh. "There was nothing else-it was so natural," Nikolaisen remembers.

Ultimately this deep, organic love for music would be a major part of Nikolaisen's decision to break from a career with bands Silver and Loch Ness Mouse to form Serena Maneesh, a long-time goal and unrelenting passion of his. He describes the genesis of the band as if it were an inevitable rush of motivation he eventually couldn't hold back any longer. "I knew this is what I'd been wanting to do for years and years and years," he says. "Eventually it had to come; it had to happen."

So far, Nikolaisen is quite grateful for the critical acclaim Serena has garnered both in the U.S. and in Europe. A brief tour last fall-and the resulting blogosphere love-added some heat to the fire, and the definite buzz status at SXSW this year has only made things hotter.

But despite his satisfaction-"We're thrilled to be here," he assures me-Nikolaisen's looking forward to getting back to the song-crafting process. "To me it's really important to head back to the writing phase again," he says. "That mode-that's what I really love the most." Perhaps that's where the serenity he uses to describe the band really lies. By contrast, the wild streets of Austin-the theater, perhaps, of Serena Maneesh's grand arrival to the United States-will never be peaceful.