Who Are … Choir of Young Believers

Choir of Young Believers main man Jannis Noya Makrigiannis is not the kind of guy you'd expect to helm an orchestral indie-rock group that could make multiple generations weep. This 26-year-old singer-songwriter's previous musical output was limited to playing guitar and singing background vocals for Lake Placid, an eight-piece ensemble in the same Danish dance-pop mold as Junior Senior and Alphabeat. His manner is chipper, and his speaking voice suggests a fellow Denmark-born musician, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich. But the Choir that began as Makrigiannis's solo vehicle has blossomed into a band responsible for what will be remembered as one of 2009's moodiest and most audacious debut albums, This Is For the White in Your Eyes. We caught up with its leader while in the studio with another ex-Placid pal.

On his Danish/Greek/Indonesian heritage:

My grandfather was from Indonesia and he moved during the Second World War to the Netherlands. He was also a musician and he traveled around Europe. He came to Denmark, met my grandmother and had my mother, who traveled to Greece and met my father, who had me. It's people traveling and having sex.

On how he musically reinvented himself while surrounded by senior citizens:

When Lake Placid broke up, I didn't know what to do. So I moved down to my father, who is from Greece, and spent a lot of time on this island, Samos. This village in the mountains where my father lived, I think 80 percent of the population is over 60 years old. If I was in Copenhagen, I would go out with my friends or do this and do that, and there I was just 100 percent focused on music. When I came home, I was sure about what I wanted to do.

On his Choir's immediate, overwhelming homeland success:

Before we made our first EP, we played on national television. We've been given lots of critics' awards and we also won a Danish Grammy. Just a month ago, we played the whole album with a 50-piece symphony orchestra and 5,000 people came to see the show. There was like teenage girls and 70-year-old men and everything in between. It's still all very new to me.

On his music's spiritual qualities:

I like Roy Orbison and Scott Walker, these guys who work with pop melodies and arrangements for strings — big emotions, when it's very symphonic and dramatic. I never thought of it as church-y, but because of the name, sometimes people think there's this religious thing to it. Religion gives people something to believe in, and music is a thing I do believe in and use to feel good about myself.

On the creation of “Hollow Talk,” the album-opening track that could make him internationally famous if placed in the right movie:

I was playing it and singing along one night and my producer said, “This is really, really nice. We should work with it.” And I was like, “Well, I don't think it's finished yet.” I don't have a computer and I don't do demo versions of my songs. I just walk around with them in my head for maybe a half year, one year before I record them. This song was very new to me and I didn't even think there was enough in it to record it. But then we started working on it, and out of the blue, we finished it in the studio. With all the other songs, I had a very particular idea of what to do and which direction we should take. But this one, poof, just had a life of its own. So I'm very proud of that song because it insisted on being on the album although it wasn't meant to be at all.

On worrying his mother and being real:

When I first played some of the music for my mother, she looked deep into my eyes and said, “Are you OK? Why is your music so sad?” When I was younger, I wanted to play loud rock music and I would not like my mother to like it because that would not be cool. Now I've learned to be more relaxed and try to express a pure feeling. Music is just an abstract way of communicating, and if you wanna communicate, it's better not to pretend that you're something other than what you really are. I think Choir of Young Believers is very much me, but it's not all of me because in some weird way all of the songs end up a little bit melancholy. Often they end up being about love, unhappy love. I don't know why, but it feels right to sing them and I can relate to their feelings.

On the misconception that he's a miserable sod because his songs are sad:

People can think whatever they want, but I hope that they will just listen to the music and not try to paint a picture of who I am because that would be the same as meeting a guy who works in a factory which produces furniture and thinking that everything he is, is a guy at a factory making furniture. If you ask a lot of my friends, I'm the most stupid-happy, very positive, jolly kinda guy.