Northern Portrait emerged on Matinee's roster a mere two months after they were founded, with a sleek, reverb-slicked sound -- headed up by Stefan Larsen's melancholy caterwaul -- that harked back to the Smiths and nodded to contemporaries like the Mary Onettes and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. The band formed in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the summer of 2007 (July, to be exact) with Larsen, Michael Sorenson, and Rune Reholt. Larsen and Sorenson had known each other since they were children, and had rehearsed together on and off again prior to forming the band. Northern Portrait were contacted by numerous labels within the first few weeks of creating their MySpace profile, and they were snapped up by Matinee by the end of August. Their debut on that label, The Fallen Aristocracy EP, was released in April of 2008. Another EP, Napoleon Sweetheart, arrived in September of that year. The trio returned with their first full-length album, Criminal Art Lovers, in late 2009. ~ TiVo Staff