Hushed life

Kings of Convenience perform music that ideally should be heard on a sunny Sunday morning and used as a soundtrack for deciphering crossword puzzle clues while lazily dissecting a cranberry scone. It's also well-suited for background music in an independently owned tea shop that has a resident cat who makes a habit of sitting in customers' laps. The Norwegian pair creates lulling acoustic melodies and sing harmonies beautiful enough to make Simon & Garfunkel blush.

Given all this, it seems impossible to fathom that the whey-faced duo of Erlend Oye and Eirik Glambek Boe could possibly bicker or yell over the creation of music so serene and calm. But the recording process for the Kings of Convenience's second album, ''Riot on an Empty Street," was nothing like the reflective music that resulted.

''The first day in the studio ended with Erlend running out and slamming the door behind him," says Boe. ''I tried to explain to the engineer that it wasn't going to be like this every day."

The studio drama stemmed from the fact that Oye and Boe have gone in remarkably different paths since recording their first album, 2001's ''Quiet Is the New Loud." The title of that first album wasn't simply chosen because of its clever play on words. ''Quiet Is the New Loud" was the King's dogma, a guiding principal that heralded a return to minimal acoustic music. It was a sharp reaction against overproduced music cluttered with so many bits and bobs that the songs themselves were becoming lost. The band performs at the Paradise tonight.

''Quiet" went on to find acclaim and much hype. It also spawned an album of remixes. After a world tour in 2002, Oye moved to Berlin and explored the electronic music universe. He released an album of techpop collaborations in 2003 called ''Unrest," and last year released a DJ album filled with further electronics. Boe temporarily dropped out of the music scene, remaining in the Kings' hometown of Bergen, Norway, working on his psychology degree.

When the two met again to record ''Riot on an Empty Street" last year, Oye was ready to eschew all the electronics and return to the Kings of Convenience sparse melodies. Boe, however, had other plans.

''I was more willing to expand on that style," says Boe on the phone from his home in Bergen, where he was lying in bed and watching the snow fall outside his window. ''Erlend wanted to do everything acoustically and not use any unnecessary rhythm or bass."

It appears that Boe won this round. ''Riot on an Empty Street" sounds fuller than ''Quiet Is the New Loud." The building blocks of the album are still finger-strummed guitar, piano, and voice, but there are more adventurous touches, such as a plucked banjo and lusher vocal harmonies. The lead track, ''Homesick," could very well have been lifted from Simon & Garfunkel's ''Sounds of Silence" album. But the duo also enter into territories bordering on traditional pop and rhythmic jazz.

''They both seem to be into quite a range of music," says Kieran Hebden, the DJ and electronic musician who records under the name Four Tet and who remixed a Kings track on the duo's ''Versus" album in 2001. ''So it makes sense that their sound covers a few areas. I went to Bergen last year and people seem to be really into dance music and pop music, so you can see where Kings of Convenience get it all from."

Bergen, the second largest city in Norway, has experienced a musical renaissance in recent years, producing acts such as Sondre Lerche, Magnet, and Röyksopp. Oye and Boe, who are both 29, met in Bergen at an interschool geography test, which Oye won by drawing a freehand map of the world from memory. It was Boe who introduced Oye to electronic music when the two were teenagers. In the ensuing years, Boe became fascinated with everything from the Smiths to Run- DMC (''I don't know where that came from. There weren't a lot of people listening to hip-hop in Norway at that time.") to bossa nova.

As teenagers, they played in a rock band called Skog (which means tree in Norwegian), which eventually evolved into Kings of Convenience. Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of the duo's quiet riot is the creation of soft acoustic music that isn't melancholy or mopey. These are observational songs that are built around snippets of seemingly mundane moments, yet somehow they are presented as fascinating and reflective snapshots in somewhat questionable but poetic English.

The basis of this careful observation is no doubt rooted in Boe's psychology studies. While Oye has evolved into a globe-trotting DJ, Boe has remained in Bergen, working on his degree. So far, he's studied for six years, and has a year remaining until he receives his diploma.

''The reason why I chose psychology is because I have this naive fascination with the truth, and finding the truth behind it all," says Boe. ''I enjoy this idea of discovering what it's really all about. I'm using the same curiosity when I'm writing music. Like psychology, music is something that's intangible. Nothing is concrete. In a way, it's like spending time in an imaginary forest. It's a place where I'm very comfortable."

Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com.

Kings of Convenience at the Paradise Rock Club, tonight at 9 p.m., $12, 18+, 617-931-2000.