The Best of That’s Why opens with a question that reached across centuries before the band ever answered it. “Children of the Future Age” sets words by William Blake inside breezy acoustic rhythm, flute, organ and communal vocals, allowing an eighteenth-century visionary to walk directly into an Oslo chapel in 1970. The result immediately explains why That’s Why remains difficult to file. This is Christian music, but it is also folk jazz, psychedelic rock, poetry recital and an attempt to remake worship for young people who had already heard what the outside world was doing with rhythm, electricity and altered consciousness.
The band grew from Forum Experimentale, founded in Oslo by priest and hymn writer Olaf Hillestad as the established church struggled to retain young people drawn toward rock, jazz and counterculture. Hillestad’s answer was not to forbid those sounds but to invite them into the sanctuary. Jan Simonsen and Per Arne Løvold became involved in the organization’s jazz masses, then gathered musicians from other Christian centers to record two albums in 1970 and 1971. The music preserves a rare moment when institutional religion briefly admitted that renewal might require genuine risk rather than familiar hymns dressed in fashionable clothes.
That risk is audible in the group’s refusal to settle upon one emotional temperature. “Vem Kan Segla,” based on the Swedish folk song “Vem kan segla förutan vind?,” carries the fragility of a melody passed between generations. Its image of sailing without wind and parting without tears fits naturally beside Christian ideas of faith, absence and endurance, but the performance never becomes a lesson. Voices, flute and restrained accompaniment leave the song open enough for homesickness, earthly love and spiritual longing to coexist.
“Tiden,” meaning “Time,” moves with greater rhythmic urgency. Acoustic guitar does not provide gentle pastoral scenery; it presses the song forward while jazz instrumentation loosens the edges. That’s Why often sounds as though several musical futures are being considered simultaneously. One route leads toward Norwegian folk revival, another toward soul jazz, another toward progressive rock, and another back into the chapel. The musicians never choose completely, which gives the recordings their searching quality.
“Mattheus 25” brings scripture into the album without pretending that biblical narration must remain musically obedient. The chapter contains parables of readiness, judgment and responsibility toward the vulnerable, themes that gain force when spoken or sung over restless modern rhythm. Rather than creating background music for a reading, the ensemble makes the text encounter another social world. Jazz improvisation and rock-inflected momentum prevent the words from sitting safely behind stained glass.
The compilation’s second half moves deeper into the peculiar emotional mixture created by That’s Why. “Den Oppstandne,” “Dyp av Nåde” and “Udødelig” announce resurrection, grace and immortality, yet the performances remain human-sized. Female and male voices can sound solemn, radiant or almost uncertain, while flute, organ and rhythm section keep shifting the ground beneath them. Faith is not presented as a polished state achieved before recording begins. It sounds like something being tested through breath, ensemble playing and repeated return.
“Udødelig” became the group’s best-known rediscovery after Jazzman included it on Spiritual Jazz 3: Europe. Its piano-led stillness shows why That’s Why belongs within spiritual jazz even though the group emerged from a specifically Christian environment. The important connection is not theology but function. Music becomes a place where devotion, improvisation and concentrated listening can alter ordinary time. The piece does not require the listener to share the musicians’ belief before entering its atmosphere.
“Gud, Skylden Er Vår Alene,” approximately “God, the guilt is ours alone,” brings a harsher moral gravity. The title refuses the comforting habit of assigning responsibility to a distant evil while preserving the innocence of the congregation. That idea feels especially potent inside music created to prevent Christianity from becoming culturally sealed. Renewal begins with recognition that institutions and believers may have helped produce the estrangement they condemn.
“Noe Annet,” or “Something Else,” is the collection’s darkest chamber. Church organ and ominous space gradually give way to forceful saxophone, transforming uncertainty into an almost apocalyptic uplift. The piece demonstrates how naturally sacred architecture can contain psychedelic unease. An organ already carries centuries of ritual association; That’s Why merely allows those associations to become unstable. The church can be shelter, mystery, authority and haunted building at the same time.
The closing “Kristus, Du Gjør Allting Nytt” translates as “Christ, You Make Everything New,” making it an appropriate conclusion to a band formed around renewal. The song’s choral energy does not erase the tensions heard before it. Instead, renewal sounds communal and unfinished, something made through the awkward cooperation of voices, inherited texts and contemporary instruments. That’s Why does not solve the conflict between Protestant restraint and ecstatic expression. The band makes that conflict audible and discovers beauty inside it.
Jazzman’s 2012 compilation rescues ten selections from the group’s scarce original records without turning them into curiosities from a quaint Christian subculture. Heard decades later, the music remains striking because its musicians did not treat youth culture as a disguise to be worn for recruitment. They genuinely entered the musical questions of their time. Psychedelia, jazz and folk were not bait placed outside the chapel door. They changed what could happen inside.
The Best of That’s Why therefore documents more than an obscure Norwegian group. It preserves an experiment in communication between generations, institutions and artistic languages. A priest recognized that prohibition had failed, young musicians discovered that belief could survive contact with improvisation, and poems from Norway, Sweden and England entered records that eventually travelled far beyond their original congregation. The music’s innocence and sophistication remain inseparable. That’s Why sounds accomplished because the players were capable, and moving because nobody knew whether this unusual bridge would hold.
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