Artist: Sunturns
Title: The Closest I Can Get (live at Parkteatret)
Format: digital
Cat#: Fika116SG1
Release date: 18th November 2025
Bandcamp | Spotify
Sunturns play exactly one show each year, at the historic Parkteatret venue in Oslo’s Grünerløkka neighbourhood. For almost 15 years, this alternative Christmas concert has been a haven and refuge for music lovers in need of a somewhat different take on Christmas. Through three albums of original Christmas songs, Sunturns have chronicled the highs and lows - okay maybe mainly the lows - of the winter solstice in Northern Europe, with humour, wit and warmth. This recording takes five tracks from last year’s concert performance, and shares them with a wider audience. The first four are taken from 2024’s album “Christmas III”, and the classic encore “The Closest I Can Get” is from 2011’s debut album “Christmas”.
“The Closest I Can Get” was first recorded for the first Sunturns album “Christmas” (2011). This album came to be as the culmination of already quite long-standing traditions among many Oslo bands to record original, alternative Christmas songs - possibly inspired by Sufjan Stevens. Sunturns was a coming together of bands like Making Marks, Monzano, The Little Hands of Asphalt and Einar Stray Orchestra, and in the band first mentioned, songwriter Ola Innset specifically gave guitarist Simen Herning songs with space for guitar solos in them as a special christmas gift for him. “The Closest I Can Get” has no less than three, epic guitar solos, and the song is always an encore at Sunturns’ annual Oslo christmas show. The recording is from last year, and if you listen closely you can hear the crowd singing along to the melodies of the solos.
Sunturns was formed as a Christmas super group by members of Oslo indiepop bands Monzano, My Little Pony and Einar Stray Orchestra. Those bands aren’t around anymore, but the band members have other projects, such as Flight Mode, The Little Hands of Asphalt, Elva, Making Marks and Mildfire.
Sunturns still exists, however, with the same name and the same line-up – strangely making it one of the most long-lived of the bands to come out of the Oslo indiepop-scene of the early 2000s. Being a Christmas band, they only play shows at a particular time of year. You guessed it: Christmas.
The name Sunturns refers to the original meaning of Christmas in the North, namely the winter solstice and the ‘turning’ of the sun. Instead of getting shorter and shorter, the days start to get longer. Big hurray, but spring is still a long time away. The band is named after the song “The Sun Turns”, which opened the debut album Christmas I, and was originally recorded by My Little Pony. Christmas II also has a song with the phrase “sunturns” (The Axial Tilt), and on Christmas III it pops up again in the track First Winter.
Sunturns are:
Ola Innset – vocals, guitars, banjo etc.
Sjur Lyseid – vocals, guitars etc.
Einar Stray – vocals, keyboards, guitars etc.
Eivind Almhjell – guitars, bass, etc.
Simen Herning – guitar
Jørgen Nordby – drums