Thomas Dybdahl and Grieghallen

Usually it takes quite a while for an artist to get a room full of people to sing along at the top of their lungs completely unaccompanied by the singer’s voice or the band. There are a lot of factors to take into account, anything from whether the audience knows the words to how many of them are die-hard fans who love the song so much that they are willing to howl along to it in the first place. All the way through to whether there’s enough of an atmosphere to justify it. So hopefully it should say a lot about Norwegian singer songwriter Thomas Dybdahl that not only do his concerts feature mass singing early on in the set, they usually open with Dybdahl conducting his choir of fans and making it look as natural as breathing. That’s not even the high point of his sets either. He and his band are adept at cycling through a multitude of genres and styles, from laidback country and hushed folk through to raging, angular post-punk and synth laden New Wave. It’s a testament to his songwriting ability that they all sound like him but it says more about the skill of his band and their collective chemistry that they can make it work night after night after night. The singing along starts at the start of the set and doesn’t let up until the very end, and few people have earned that reception like Thomas Dybdahl has.