Lukestar is Coming to America
Crammed into the hot and sweaty basement of Cake Shop, Lukestar played their first New York show during CMJ. The foursome played for a room filled with the usual Lower East Side crowd, other 20-something music fans checking 
out the festival and a large crowd of Norwegians who came to cheer on their homeland heroes. The guys didn’t seem to mind the conditions. Instead singer/guitarist Truls Heggero got an idea, “Let’s get naked.” Unfortunately (or fortunately?) no one followed through.
Heggero, Yngve Hilmo, Marius Ergo, and Jørgen Smådal Larsen started Lukestar four years ago and have played over 100 concerts in Norway and Europe. Their second album, Lake Toba was recorded almost 1 ½ years ago in Sweden. “It was a very intense month of recording,” says Heggero. “We did not do it in Oslo so we didn’t have to go home after recording. We could sleep in the studio.”
For the band their music is hard to define, but their record label thinks they could be compared to early Weezer or maybe Blonde Redhead. Both use atmospheric sounds and Heggero’s gender bending falsetto is oddly similar to Kazu Makino's. “Sometimes Truls sings like Japanese girl.” jokes Larsen. “Sometimes he dresses up like a Japanese girl,” continues Ergo.
The band has been inspired by ’80s pop music, Queen and Nevermind creating “noisy pop songs.” The post-hardcore “Hologram” along with other songs on the album uses gigantic choruses that stick in your head. On “White Shade” childlike vocals echo the guitars, highlighting Heggero’s indecipherable singing style. The lyrics of some son could have been torn from the pages of a book on ancient mythology, where other songs seem just as suited for pop radio. Over the two albums, the band has evolved from 3-chord pop songs into dynamic soundscapes of guitars, drums, bass & keyboards highlighted by the surprising (in a good way) vocals of Heggero. Though they have changed, Hilmo believes there are still ways to keep the band evolving. “I think there will be a paradigm shift in our career if we all start smoking crack,” he says. “We’ll turn into a jam band.”
At 1 am, Lukestar made their way to the stage stomachs filled to the brim with Sparks and ready to make their debut. The guys stayed true to the album, playing it just the way their fans wanted them to. Others for who this was their first time experiencing the band were kept entertained, screaming for them to come back when their set was unexpectedly cut short by an angry sound woman. “We play nice melodic music that will make your day better,” Ergo says. And for many they seemed to have done just that.
-Shannon Carlin
Check for tourdates on http://www.myspace.com/lukestar
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