Bygones

Silver Lining has recorded their third studio album, the absolutely lovely Bygones. The indie folk quartet's releases – however sad and melancholic the music may sound – have always been characterized by an abundance of energy, creativity, and the audible joy from four exceptionally skilled musicians and songwriters playing together.

They recorded the album in Norsk Riksstudio in Bergen, with Njål Paulsberg as engineer and Øyvind Blomstrøm as producer. While Go Out Nowhere (2022) sounded big, recorded with synths, drums, and bass, Bygones partly returns to the band's roots. It is warmer, more stripped-down, with what has always been the band's strengths in focus: beautiful voices, harmonies, and guitars.

The result is nine strong compositions from Stine Andreassen, Halvor Falck Johansen, and Live Miranda Solberg – three songwriters, each with their own distinctive style – enhanced by the one-of-a-kind Bjørnar Brandseth's electric and pedal steel guitars. The inspiration from Gillian Welch and David Rawlings is never far away, but the references are broader. Johansen sounds like eighties Dylan on "GMAM," the opening track "Set Me Free" references Abba, "Sunlit Boulevard" is a kind of funky west coast duet, and "Easy Loving Me" is an ambivalent love song in the way only Live Miranda Solberg can write them.

The fact that Silver Lining has gone in a more stripped-down direction does not mean we aren't served plenty of gorgeous instrumentation and cool details. On Bygones, there are layers upon layers of acoustic and electric guitars, harmonies, and general aural candy. Producer Blomstrøm (Orions Belte, Steamdome, Odd Nordstoga) has fine-tuned the band's expression, while bassist Toivo Fjose and percussionist Erik Nylander gently help lift the songs with a tasteful less-is-more approach.

There’s a certain expectation to a side-project – Silver Lining includes, among others, musicians and songwriters from The Northern Belle and Louien – that it will just be served the songs that weren’t good enough for the main projects. But for Silver Lining, the magic happens in the interplay between four members who are also best friends, and who always put quality before quantity.

Silver Lining celebrated ten years as a band in 2025, and the anniversaries continue to line up: this May marked ten years since their first single, and next year marks ten years since the first EP I'll Be Waiting for You (In the Grey) was released. The debut album Heart and Mind Alike came in 2018, and Go Out Nowhere followed in 2022. In 2025, the EP Four Little Songs was released. Silver Lining has been nominated for a Spellemann award, has won the Fjording Prize, and has toured Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Bygones releases on Die With Your Boots On Records on December 11th 2026.

FFO: Gillian Welch, Waxahatchee, Darling West, Bonny Light Horseman, JJ Cale