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Concerts So Successful the Band Was Forgotten
Sigur Rós are an experimental rock band from Mosfellsbær, essentially a suburb of Reykjavík, who have become international critical favourites with three extremely respected albums. Yeah, odds are, you know who they are – the guys who sing the “eeeeeh eeh eeh,…
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Nature Grabs You by the Back of the Neck
The last weekend of July, you couldn’t help but think that thanks to visionaries like Andri Snær Magnason and Sigur Rós you’d have to be a complete moron to support big industry in Iceland. This in spite of that fact our government…
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The Day the Hippies Took Over the Park
The Sigur Rós show in Miklatún was a success, of sorts. They are probably the first Icelandic band to arrange a free outdoor show that wasn’t part of an event or festival; in fact, they practically created their own festival. There were…
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No frills reviews of the festival for homebodies
Innipúkinn is an annual music festival for the colourful characters who decide, for some odd reason, to stay in the capital while the rest of the nation scatters to various places around the country. This year the biggest foreign bands were Television…
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“We Like Country People”
Borgarfjörður Eystri is a beautiful place, a small town in the country with a population of about 140. You wouldn’t expect culture to erupt from this place. Yet Borgarfjörður has been home to many of Iceland’s most prominent artists. Iceland’s most famous…
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“That’s Not Arrogance; It’s Ambition”
“I love the amount of personal space you get here, and the good company. They don’t let just anybody in here, you know.” I would hear that sentence, or at least those exact sentiments, from several people over the next few hours.…
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Shitting Glitter – Free Alongside Ship
Shitting Glitter are a so-so pop band trying to pass themselves off as a fashionable industrial electro-clash band, but it just isn’t working. Their attempts at sounding danceable, which are usually confined to turning up the tempo on the drum machine, practically…
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Ready to Fuck
There was a strange nostalgic scent in the air as girls dressed appropriately and guys had done their best to imitate the style of hip-hop. It was apparent from everything that rap and hip-hop are a thing of the past when it…
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The Músíktilraunir Kids Continue to Shine
Whenever some crappy band in Iceland decides to pretend they’re múm or Sigur Rós and make a bunch of slow, boring and uneventful music that’s supposed to make you feel as if you’re soaring over a glacier, I feel like I want…
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Black Keys Chulahoma – The Songs of Junior Kimbrough
On the surface, it seems like an evil idea: two cutish white kids from Akron, Ohio doing a six-song EP of covers of the greatest, hardest living, relatively unknown Mississippi bluesman, Junior Kimbrough. Even those of us who were fans of the…
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Telepathetics – Ambulance
Give the Telepathetics credit for two things off the bat: an amusing name, and a huge amount of creative energy – meaning they are trying very hard to be creative, not that they are investing a huge amount of interest or intelligence…
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Bela – Hole and Corner
Like the Telepathetics above, Bela is an Icelander “discovered” by British industry people. Like the Telepathetics, Bela has excellent production. In fact, Bela sounds quite tolerable, with a good low voice, and enchanting guitar parts. Even the cover is neat, kind of.…
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Guðlaugur Kristinn Óttarsson – Dense Time
We got this CD months ago, and we never put it on the stereo. It comes in a jewel case, just a piss yellow booklet on it saying the author and title. And then, one day, we put it in, and said,…
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Æla – Sýnið tillitsemi, ég er frávik
Keflavík punk prima donnas Æla’s debut release is a serious sufferer of Garage Band Syndrome, an illness that manifests itself by having a lead singer that drags the rest of the band down by being lame. The rest of the album is…
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Flaming Lips – At War With the Mystics
We watched, and listened to, the Flaming Lips drive an Acid Punk movement in the 90s, then they blew the introspective noise rock genre that the more popular Smashing Pumpkins were playing with to bits. And through all of this, they would…
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Gnarls Barkley – St. Elsewhere
The last three years we’ve heard nothing but Danger Mouse, first with the Grey Album, then with Gorillaz’ Demon Days, and now with Gnarls Barkley. This year’s release from Danger Mouse is an emotionally bare, somewhat angsty single that sounds like the…
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Quantum Leap: We Did it Sam, We Saved Homoerotic Icelandic Rock!!
I had seen Icelandic rock icons HAM 15 years ago at Fellahellir. I thought they looked like freaks (guess they still do) and I was actually a little bit scared of Óttarr Proppé, who I felt sounded like the devil, or should…
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Bruce Springsteen – We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
Doing an album of Pete Seeger classics isn’t all that imposing a task. Pete Seeger influenced a lot of people, befriended a lot of people, but as much as Seeger is essential to the life stories of everyone from Leadbelly to Woody…
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How the Techno and Lo-fi Show Didn’t Disappoint
Reykjavík is the kind of place where, one day, the neighbour that you never realised spoke English will knock on your door and tell you that the rest of your neighbours are in a band, on TV, right now. My neighbour’s band,…
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Reykjavík! – Glacial Landscapes, Religion, Oppression & Alcohol
For an album bearing Iceland’s identifying hallmarks as its title, Reykjavík!’s debut is surprisingly un-Icelandic, especially in its frenetic and swerving mood swings and crackling, yet minimal energy, making fast trademarks of alienated, ironic mockery, twangy, harried guitars and the hellish croaks…
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Bremen Town Musician – Silent Arrows
Silent Arrows is a secretive work. Forlorn, hypnotic and ethereal, it is blessed with the rare ability to experiment without being pretentious, consisting almost solely of gentle, yet insistent violins playing to random taps of percussion, only occasionally broken up by the…
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192-Hour Party People
It would take a die-hard stalwart of a Guns ‘N Roses fan to be satisfied with the million-dollar joke the distinctly ungainly Axl Rose pulled on his 60,000 strong audience. Swaggering onstage almost an hour after they were scheduled to start, he…
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A Hardcore Seminar In Political Apathy
The atmosphere was strange at Grand Rokk. The New York band The Gang didn’t seem to attract a large audience. Most in attendance were there to see Æla and/or Benny Crespo’s Gang. Æla started off the night with sheer brilliance. There has…