For those who haven’t come across him before, Lokoy is Lasse Lokøy, bass guitarist in ‘pop-punk’ band Sløtface. I’m sure he knows all about the pitfalls of the Norwegian letter ø. Sløtface used to be called Slutface of course until public antipathy towards that moniker prompted the band to change the name but not the pronunciation. ø is pronounced ‘uh’. And the uppercase Ø is ‘uuugh’. Here endeth your first lesson in Norwegian.
Lokoy has featured in NMR before (November 2018) and I’ve reviewed him a few times personally. On one occasion I said that he should concentrate on being a bass guitarist in a band but to be fair most of his songs haven’t been too bad, just that one.
He’s a busy lad, outside of the Sløtface whirl. He’s already released numerous solo singles and an EP in his build up to a first full length album which is scheduled for early next year. Moreover he’s had a collection of collaborations, some of them on that EP, with girl in red, Jimi Somewhere, Safario and dePresno. The PR paints him as ‘bassist, singer, songwriter, producer, polymath and party-starter.’ As long as he isn’t a fire starter. Someone else did that.
I’m not sure just where all this leaves Sløtface but doubtless he knows exactly what he is doing.
‘never missed you like i do now’ (the lower case is deliberate) was co-written with fellow Norwegian Axident who has worked with Dua Lipa, MØ, and Justin Bieber). It’s no ‘accident’ that it became a heartbreak duet, being written during a long tour with Sløtface, during which equipment was stolen out of their van and (like other singles he’s released, I’m certain of it) aimed at least at his girlfriend in absentia (“Ever since you left I’ve been taking these long showers / haven’t really slept in 40 hours”) but also his parents, who are the actual object of the song’s title.
The track is bass heavy as you might expect and it rolls along at quite a pace and partly in a sort of rap-lite style. That bass line is catchy, too, it sounds like the one in Martha and the Muffins’ classic ‘Echo Beach’. In case anyone thinks Lasse is a boy soprano or that he is wearing trousers that are too tight around the crotch, the opening words and reprises are sung by ‘Chloe’, who I suspect may be his girlfriend, and as he says she puts a different interpretation on the title line; one which he wanted to be deciphered in different ways anyway so he was pleased with that outcome.
Just towards the end the vocals stop and there seems to be an increase in instrumentation for the last 20 seconds. Unfortunately it soon peters out because I reckon that is the best part of the song (with no disrespect intended to Chloe) and could have gone on for a while longer, extending what is only a two minute fifty second track.
So what’s the verdict? I’m sticking with my previous analysis about him playing bass in a punk band because (a) he’s a top bass player and (b) Sløtface is a top band. But as it’s clear he’s determined to pursue this alternative path, good luck to him. This isn’t bad at all. He hasn’t quite got there yet but he’s heading in the right direction for sure.