It's Album Time

In early 2012, the music director of a Norwegian state-funded radio station called P3 declined to add a song called "Inspector Norse" by disco producer Todd Terje to its rotation, saying it sounded like "background music at a beach bar." When an interviewer asked him what he thought about the radio station's description, Terje said he agreed with it. "It sounds like elevator music. Good, danceable elevator music." Then, in a pun fit only for hypothetical dads, he added, "Elevate your body!" In Terje's world, there is no distinction made between beating and joining—it's all join, join, join.

It's Album Time is, as advertised, his first full-length album. The title sets the tone: Casual, confident, and unburdened by the imagined need for significance that scares so many good dance producers into losing their cool when given a bigger platform. Most of the music on it could be classified as disco, with shades of cocktail lounge, exotica, surf instrumentals, and other styles that favor whimsy and novelty over sober artistic expression. Not that Terje isn't an artist—he is, and a careful one, fluent in history, expert with texture, and with a grasp on composition more akin to a 1960s film composer than a contemporary techno producer. But for as much ground as he covers on It's Album Time, the music feels effortless, gliding from Henry Mancini-esque detective jazz to bouncy, Stevie Wonder funk like breeze blowing through the waffle weave of a leisure suit. Conventional wisdom bears out: The looser the grip, the tighter the hold.

Despite recycling four of its twelve tracks from previously released singles and EPs, It's Album Time has a linear, cohesive feel. Instead of trying to top "Strandbar" or "Inspector Norse", Terje ties them together with short interstitial tracks—valleys that give perspective to the mountains. If he ever capitulates to the conventions of making a full-length album, it's in structure, which here is less redolent of disco than classic-rock pranksters like Paul McCartney or Frank Zappa: an introduction that features men whispering the words "It's album time" repeatedly, peaking with a ballad halfway through; closing with the joyous "Inspector Norse", and dying away to the sound of distant applause.

Terje is, at heart, a comedian. "I like my music very fruity," he told Resident Advisor in 2007. "Lots of percussion, lots of silly effects." When I interviewed the illustrator Bendik Kaltenborn, who has drawn the covers for most of Terje's releases including It's Album Time, he told me that the two first bonded over what Kaltenborn called a "Stupid" sense of humor. Everything about It's Album Time and Terje's self-presentation—whether it's the fart-like synth sounds, the conga-line enthusiasm, or the promo photos of him flexing his minor biceps with a pout on his face—is so studiously carefree that he sometimes seems less like a human being than an all-night party incarnate.

But like all comedy, Terje's act is held together by a taut thread of sadness. The beauty of his music is the beauty of a neon sign outside a cheap motel: It's kitschy but it knows it, and in its kitsch conveys both loneliness (it's dark outside and you've been driving for hours) and its easy resolution (it's warm inside and happy hour never ends, pink paper umbrella gratis). In the mockumentary-style video for Terje's "Inspector Norse" (which is excerpted from a Norwegian short film called Whateverest), a failed electronic musician living with his elderly father in a small town spends a day bowling and cooking drugs from household chemicals before turning out the lights and dancing to "Inspector Norse", alone. Afterwards, he wanders the streets in facepaint, confused, crying. He survives mostly on illusions, and without happy music, he'd be lost.

The album's least representative song is the one that sticks with me the most: A cover of the Robert Palmer ballad "Johnny and Mary," sung by Roxy Music singer Bryan Ferry. The song is heavy, melancholic, and almost oppressively romantic—moods that the rest of It's Album Time feel designed to make you forget about. The lyrics tell the story of a couple who know they're alienated from each other but have hung on for so long they struggle with whether or not to break up. "Johnny's always running around, trying to find certainty," the opening line goes. "He needs all the world to confirm that he ain't lonely/ Mary counts the walls, knows he tires easily."

Ferry has spent his entire career crying crocodile tears, exploring the ways a seemingly insincere performance can ring with more feeling and pathos than something we recognize as "real". His voice—once a dazzling, cartoonish instrument, like Elvis with his finger in a wall socket—sounds hollowed-out and whispery, an old man whose wisdom brings him no comfort. In the original song, Palmer seems to hover above the characters, observing them, maybe even judging. Ferry sounds like he's in the next room, suffering troubles of his own.

As the song crests and the rippling arpeggios of Terje's synths reach their climax, you might wonder: What is a song so sad doing on an album so relentlessly upbeat? Not to ruin the mood, I think—only as a reminder that sadness is a choice. You could be "Inspector Norse" if you wanted to, peacocking wild across the dancefloor, spilling drinks on a stranger, recognizing the brevity of life by enjoying it. From an artist like Terje, it's proof that he could go deep if he wanted to. He'd just rather have fun.