“We’re a bit 1985 and we’re a bit 2020, we keep going back and we keep moving forward. We’re like everything you have heard, and everything you have never heard.” – Lorraine

Lorraine have been touted by some as the ‘saviours of pop’ ; all the elements are there to turn these 3 guys from Bergen into superstars. A pioneering and forward thinking attitude and approach both aurally and visually combined with a healthy nod to their heroes of the past and traditional quality songwriting skills. And all this covered with a hearty dusting of pop magic. Their choruses are so big, and the live show is so great that if you shut your eyes these guys could easily be filling the stage at your largest local arena, and soon will, no doubt.

For a band whose outlook, tunes and future seem so encouragingly unusual, the story of how they came together is so steeped in rock n’ roll cliché that is might prompt even Justin Hawkins to double take. Bunking off school on the same afternoon, strangers Ole and Anders found themselves in the same guitar shop. Sitting back to back on benches, they both started playing ‘Stairway To Heaven’ at the same time. A terrifying vision, certainly, but that’s how it happened, and how Lorraine played in public before they’d even looked each other in the eye. Anders and Ole made an odd pair of friends. Anders is impossibly quiet, hiding behind his fringe, his words precise and well-considered, but if chatting was an Olympic sport, Ole could feasibly represent Norway. (As it happens Anders could, in an alternate universe, have represented his country at something all together different – at the age of 11 he held the Scandinavian silver medal for speed walking, the lightly comic Olympic sport he now recognises to be largely useless. “If you’re a fast runner you can run from things like tigers or elephants,” he muses. “Walking is useless.”)

Lorraine are Ole Gunnar Gundersen (26, vocals), Anders Winsents (26, guitar) and Paal Myran Haaland (25, keyboards, programming). Between them the members’ personal influences range from New Order, Kraftwerk and Depeche Mode to Kasabian, The Smiths and The Stone Roses, so it’s no surprise that Lorraine’s own music sounds like it should come with ‘Your new favourite band’ stamped across every CD.

Melodically breathtaking with a lyrical touch that recalls the flamboyant nervousness of Neil Tennant at his most miserably optimistic, Lorraine’s songs are finished off with a unique modern twist. The band have their own take on the Lorraine sound – they named themselves after Marty’s mum in Back To The Future, but their ideology lies in the film’s sequel. “We’re a bit 1985 and we’re a bit 2020,” explains Ole. “We keep going back and we keep moving forward. We’re like everything you have heard, and everything you have never heard.”

After a brief period knocking about with friends in a Prodigy-influenced electro metal outfit Anders and Ole set their sights elsewhere and, on their way back from a jam session in a local pizza parlour, chanced upon Paal. He was at a bus stop, drunk and shouting. It was not long before he became Lorraine’s third member, his (oddly immaculate) bedroom doubling as the band’s first recording studio.

In the summer of 2000 the band, now in their late teens, decided not to go back to school. Paal’s bedroom was traded for a workspace, 45 minutes outside Bergen, in a decaying factory building. The units surrounding Lorraine’s studio were filled with either crackheads or car mechanics. The heating didn’t work. It’s cold anyway in Norway, but in this ice-pocket it was often so cold that floppy discs would freeze into the band’s sampler. The band stayed there for twelve months – it was like self-imposed boot camp. The trio would record a rock song one day, a pop song the next day, and maybe a techno track the day after that. Some days they would start with a lyric, others with a bassline, or a keyboard riff. No two songs would fall together in the same way. Then, one day, everything clicked. The newly invigorated Lorraine sound was splashed in broad strokes across the songs ‘Saved’ and ‘I Feel It’. Between them they formed 2005’s teaser single – a limited, clear vinyl double a-side 7” on the indie label Genepool – which prompted a flurry of interest from labels and the media. It was, Time Out rather breathlessly declared, “the greatest debut single of 2005”. There is plenty more to come.

Lorraine enjoyed a Top 30 hit ‘I Feel It’ last year, and since then have been completing their debut album, which will finally be released in Autumn 2008. This is being preceded by several singles, including a limited edition 7” single release of live show-stopper ‘Saved’, released in December 2007, which sold out a 1000 copy run in a matter of days, and new single ‘When I Return To The World’ (May 2008). The band are the first to admit recording the album has taken longer than they expected, however the result is them honing their sound into something they are now completely satisfied with. The album also now includes a number of brand new tracks recorded in recent months.

“Our songs mix up reality and unreality,” Paal explains. Many of Lorraine’s songs are based on dreams; Ole believes that only in dreams are we completely honest and unfettered by often unfairly imposed moral and societal codes. “It’s about articulating the thoughts in your head,” Ole adds. “Thoughts which wouldn’t come out in conversation – hopes, dreams, a dark positivism. I don’t know if our songs are happy or sad – we can be quite melancholic.” He thinks for a little while. “There is happiness, but it might only be temporary.”

“We’ve had some kind of trip into another world making this album,” Paal smiles. “We’re all about big atmosphere, big sounds, big songs. We always wanted everything to be very big.” It’s hard to believe these particular dreams won’t become a reality. It is, after all, about defining your own destiny.