“An expressive singer and precise guitarist with a modern sound and the classic songwriting tradition as a base.”
- Anne Grete Preus
Bendik Finborud
Bendik Finborud was born in 1995 in Voss, a small town in the western part of Norway. He started playing music at an early age. Finding inspiration in the intimate sound and lyrics of nordic folk and folk-pop artists of the time. He soon gravitated towards songwriting. In 2015 he started studying at the University of Agder, joining the first group in Norway to take a bachelors degree in songwriting.
Finborud also started working on what would become his first singles, “Feels Like Home”, “This Time It’s Goodbye” and “Rebel, Rebel”. The songs gained some acclaim, especially the second single, This Time It’s Goodbye. Avisa Hordaland called it “A calm, clear, pure and beautiful ballad.” Finborud also started dabbling with art and animation, and in early 2019 released his first self made, hand painted music video. Hand made animations would become somewhat of a trademark for the artist.
Tears & Laughter
Throughout 2018 and 2019 Finborud worked on the music for an upcoming album that would come to be called “Tears & Laughter”. This time around the album would be written, recorded and produced mainly at home, only working with a handful of young musicians. During this time Finborud also started to writing music about the grief of losing his mother at an early age. The songs on “Tears & Laughter” painting a vivid, authentic and complex image of grief.
“I realised I had never really confronted my feelings surrounding the loss of my mother. One day, listening to Dylan, I kind of stumbled upon “Mama, You Been On My Mind”, and the tears and lyrics just started flowing. Suddenly writing about grief seemed like the most natural thing in the world.”
Bargaining
The first single from the album, “Bargaining”, named after one of the seven stages of grief, was released in the summer of 2020, accompanied by yet another self-made hand painted music video. The video consists of just under 2000 separate acrylic paintings, traced (rotoscoped) on thin paper over a computer screen. Finborud himself said the music video would have been difficult to finish if it hadn’t been for the covid-19 outbreak.
“Getting stuck in Voss for months on end without my guitar or microphone I had to get creative. Thankfully my father is an artist, so we had about a years supply of acrylic paint. Thanks to covid I also had all the time in the world and no distractions. The video took about eight months to make, which is a lot, but I think it would have taken at least a year had it not been for the circumstances.”
“Bargaining” gained a lot of praise, with ballade.no calling it "[...] one of the most beautiful things we've seen in a long time." The video also earned a nomination for best music video at Bergen International Film Festival (BIFF) 2020.
Recent Singles
Following Bargaining, Bendik Finborud has released two more singles. “No One Compares”, a classic love story stretching the span of a relationships, told through the little moments along the way. In September 2020, he released “Just Another Day”. The song was written about the refugee crisis, the title underlining the unbearably slow rate at which decisions are made; "...we will help in just another day.” Just Another Day describes the absurdity of the situation with an upbeat and unconcerned summer sound, contrasted by marring lyrics criticising the way we view the crisis.
The full length album Tears & Laughter is scheduled to be released in the spring of 2021, following a three more singles, the first of which coming out in November.
“They tell me that death is a part of it all
It’s just I didn’t understand how fast it would go
I just tell you again that it’s time to go on
Tears and laughter gone”
From “Tears & Laughter”
Photo: Jørgen Dahl Moe
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