Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.01.2006, Blaðsíða 33
Hairdoctor
Shampoo
Hairdoctor snuck up on us—known
more for their hairdressing and
DJing at Sirkus bar, they seemed
to be taking advantage of the good
will they’d built up when they got
onto the big stage at this year’s
Iceland Airwaves Festival. The
album they released shortly after
their gig, Shampoo, demonstrates
that these slacker posers have the
most mature and original sound to
come out of Iceland in 2005. Two
things strike you, if you get through
the album one time: the production
value is heavy but authentic—like
what Beck wanted to do when he
first started, only with a little more
competence; and the vocals are
quirky but not cute. On repeated
listenings, you’ll realise how perfectly
minimal the vocals and guitar lines
are—layered as they are above the
ridiculously adept rhythms previously
mentioned. In the end, you get an
album that keeps you moving, keeps
you thinking and doesn’t feel, in the
slightest, forced.
In addition to the album Shampoo,
the production mind behind
Hairdoctor, Plúseinn (Plus One),
released a series of Christmas songs
on the Hairdoctor website. With
help from Óttarr Proppé, Hugleikur
Dagsson and Gísli Galdur, the 23 free
MP3s complement the album well.
(www.hairdoctormusic.com/jola.htm)
Babyshambles
Down in Albion
Since I saw Babyshambles in Oslo
last summer, I’ve been curious as
to how, in all the mentions of Pete
Doherty in the British Yellow
Press—and I throw any and all
culture magazines into the fold here-
- over the last two years, nobody
could have observed that the man is
rewriting British pop into something
actually worth the price of the CD.
Down in Albion, the
Babyshambles panned first-release,
is not pure gold… it is something
better. It is an album of pop rock
that sounds nothing like what’s on
the radio—typically only one clear
guitar and bass, not the everybody-
and-their-neighbour-should-be-
overdriven-on-this-track style of
most pop, no vocal line-tracing lead,
(mercifully, Doherty shed both of
these hallmarks of crap pop when he
stepped away from the Libertines,
his infantile launching pad) no
friggin high hat (just to remind you
again that Franz Ferdinand is at the
top of the charts, and four months
from now you’ll hate yourselves for
ever listening to them).
Instead you get vocal lines
that push away from the obvious
melody—like Morrissey if he had
a sex drive; and you get lyrics that
keep the self-obsession that is in the
air of all pop music, but that is more
self-aware, more humorous, and
seems to have a great deal more at
stake. With one or two exceptions,
especially when Pete strays too far
into reggae, or when he loans the
mic to the man who protected him
in prison for a full track, the songs
on Down in Albion are as exciting
as rock gets. Put together, they make
for a landmark album, one that much
better for how poorly received it has
been by his own countrymen.
Am I Brit-bashing? True, I
find most critics in England to be
wannabes who turn to a stereotype
and a tired metaphor before turning
on their damned CD players, and
the number of times they reply on
sheer gossip and hearsay would
make Rupert Murdoch blanch. But
I acknowledge the Brits have often
discovered the best in Icelandic
music—and for that matter
American music—in the past: they
proudly heralded The Sugarcubes
and Sigur Rós, to say nothing
of essentially saving American
blues and the whole discovering
Bob Dylan thing. (The recent
documentary No Direction Home
paints a nasty picture of their turn on
him, but to be fair, before 1966 and
since, England has been good to the
bard of the Midwest.)
So the British press can be world
class, and they have done good
things. It’s just, at present, they are
incapable of doing anything right.
Perhaps when music fans force
them to listen to bands they casually
dismissed in the search for the next
Arctic Monkeys, they will catch on
and apologise.
By Bart Cameron
33
January 13 - February 26 2006
Versations / Tetralógía
Listasafn Reykjavíkur / The Reykjavik Art Museum - HAFNARHÚS - Tryggvagata 17, 101 Reykjavík
www.listasafnreykjavikur.is - listasafn@reykjavik.is - simi (+354) 590 1200 - fax (+354) 590 1201
The installation was on show
at the Icelandic pavilion during
the Venice Biennial 2005
Gabríela Friðriksdóttir