From Iceland — Bubbi - Kona

Published December 5, 2005

Many a creative masterwork has been salvaged from the shards of a broken heart, and although Kona is by no means a work of genius, it certainly stands out as Bubbi’s best work. A musical manifestation of desperate bitterness thinly veiled behind a hopeful and weary smile, it drops any pretense of innovation in its yearning for understanding, and in the process becomes as much a tribute to Bob Dylan, J.J. Cale and Johnny Cash as it is to love had, held and brutally lost.
Kona’s 20th-anniversary reissue also drives home a weary but powerful point: Revolutions come and go, wars are fought and lost and one generation’s battle cry becomes the next’s history lesson, but the simple tortures of loss and fruitless soul-searching are just as effective now as they have always been.