Music Reviews: Laufey, Tómas Jónsson, & Kira Kira

The latest issue of Grapevine is now flooding the streets of Reykjavík and various other municipalities. In the latest paper, we scrutinised three new releases by Icelandic musicians, including Iceland’s hottest punk artist Laufey!

Gúmbó nr. 5 by Tómas Jónsson
LP — Released August 22

Opening up Gúmbó nr. 5 by the prolific jazz musician Tómas Jónsson is sort of like walking into a sweaty rehearsal space in the back alleys of Nashville. Half-empty moonshine bottles are strewn around a close group of musicians who’ve all been riffing on the same motif for days on end. At least, that’s what the title track makes me envision. After listening to the album, you realise you’re not in Nashville, but Iceland, and those moonshine bottles are more likely flasks of landi. Honky tonk pianos, organs, and melodicas all have their place cooking up a tasty gumbo varying in texture, energy and thrust. Combining blues, country, boogie, and jazz, Tómas Jónsson and his entourage serve an excitingly fresh approach to the dreary blues format, revitalised with fervour and pungency. JB

Léttir by Kira Kira

Léttir by Kira Kira
LP — Released August 23

If you would have to boil down the Icelandic love for unfettered creation and musicmaking to one person, Kira Kira would be a strong contender. Never one to be held back by rules or ambivalent red tape, Kira Kira has a strong inclination of following her artistic intuition, often taking a leap of faith into the unknown. Such was the inception of her latest album Léttir, released while Kira Kira was still in the process of recording it. Here, Kira Kira strips the creative process bare of any intermediaries, imprinting her music directly onto a pocket record as it was conceived. Experimenting and improvising as she went along, Léttir is part of a rare collection of truly honest and pure music. JB

A Matter of Time by Laufey
LP — Released August 24

When international superstar Laufey released her third LP, no one doubted its immediate popularity. A pioneer in many aspects, Laufey has successfully found her working formula, modernising the big-band jazz format. Still, A Matter of Time has room for nice surprises, such as the acoustic guitar-driven “Snow White” and “Castle in Hollywood” — harking back to Laufey’s first forays into music. Further down the line, Laufey pays homage to her mother tongue in “Forget-Me-Not.” Glossing over the lyrics of that particular track, Laufey sings, “I’m still that child on a black sand beach,” one can make a pretty harrowing (and probably inadvertent) connection to a recent death at Reynisfjara, Black Sand Beach, where a nine-year-old girl was swept away by a sneaker wave. Given that the incident happened two weeks before Laufey’s release, it’s unlikely that the artist was implicitly referring to that scene. JB