Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.11.2007, Blaðsíða 36

20 | Reykjavík Grapevine | Issue 17 2007 | Reviews
Better the Devil You Knew…
Art Museum – Thursday: Jenny Wilson intro-
duced her track “Bitter” by quoting its lyric “I
love to complain”; the songwriter shouldn’t have
anything to complain about after her stellar set,
tackling torch songs and dance tunes alike with
her pop-cum-disco-via-lounge aesthetic until the
crowd was practically eating out of her hands. Id-
iosyncratic doesn’t even begin to describe Wilson
and her band’s hypnotic brand of otherworldly,
orchestral musings; she is simply to be seen to be
believed. Katie Hasty
Gaukurinn – Thursday: In terms of sheer white-
knuckle terror, few bands could match the sar-
cophogal bleakness of the Icelandic death metal
band Changer. Their songs were pure harrowing
drops into the abyss, pairing jackhammer guitars
with vocals that went from death growl to body-on-
fire screech. By their set’s end they’d successfully
managed to clear the club, but their terrifying force
was almost matchless. J. Edward Keyes
Iðnó – Friday: Part of the magic of Airwaves is
stumbling upon a gem you’ve never heard before,
and Plants and Animals provided that in spades.
The Canadian quintet delivered an astonishing set
of shape-shifting post-rock punctuated by the stun-
ning “New Kind of Love” which began as a hushed
3 part harmony and finished with a cathartic cli-
max worthy of the Flaming Lips. Don Bartlett
Lidó – Friday: Lay Low might not be able to blast
the ice out of the older audience’s Diet Pepsi at will,
but she is rightly known as the princess of Icelan-
dic blues and with Benny Crespo’s Gang she’s an
integral part of something best described as loud
electro rock created by boys (and, of course, one
girl) with their toys and a whole battery of satisfy-
ing cannon shots let off by a drummer who is either
very angry or gloriously talented. It’s probably a
combination of the two. Ben H. Murray
Organ – Saturday: Saturday’s show was Strigaskór
nr. 42’s first in nearly a decade and, unsurprisingly,
they drew the biggest crowd. The attention was not
unwarranted. Simply put, their songs are astonish-
ing, full of clean lines and taut rhythms. They played
with stunning precision, employing an economy of
sound that recalled groups like Wire and Don Ca-
ballero. Notes came in tight, sharp bursts, more like
Morse code than music. Even the few guitar solos
were proudly minimalist, favouring single quiver-
ing tones over dizzying fretwork. J. Edward Keyes
Nasa – Saturday: !!! have been on a roll for a
while, turning out a very good album earlier this
year and playing a string of buzzed-over live shows.
Tonight, !!! offered all the best parts of being in a
dance club ñ plus guitars ñ with a set that touched
on indie-disco, stomping pseudo-techno, party-
funk, conga-laden funk, and Daft Punkian funk. All
their percussion, keyboard and horn parts seemed
perfectly placed, and !!! repeatedly whipped the
crowd into a frenzy. The songs were jammy, but !!!
are no wankers ñ the difference between them and
say, Phish, is like the difference between Björk and
Celine Dion. Christian Hoard
Airwaves Highlights
Jenny Wilson. Photo by Rúnar Sigurjónsson
Who Knew. Photo by GAS
After the previous week’s hectic live music sched-
ule around Reykjavík, having just a pair of bands
on at Organ seemed almost a waste of time and
space but thankfully at least one group more than
made up for the lack of numbers with some mem-
orable song writing and a performance that belied
any festival hangover.
However, that band was not the evening’s
opener, Jezebel. You can’t deny their smiling en-
thusiasm, neatly slotted together songs or careful-
ly referenced 80’s guitar hooks, but the whole set
just had a whiff of naff old eggs that wouldn’t go
away. With so much going on, from the intro that
sounded similar to Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’ to
the slow sleazed out electro with overtones of Daft
Punk (particularly on ‘Shockwave’) interspersed
with some shouty rapping, the whole project just
didn’t quite hold together to produce a credible
live performance and the crowd who weren’t fa-
miliar with their work stood around amused (or
bemused) by it all.
This is a shame as the band has a notable
and obvious talent for making music if they’re
to be judged from the menagerie of styles and
sounds used, but maybe it should be focused on
other avenues that don’t mix Beastie Boys-style
white homeboy rapping, 80’s cheeseball electro
and a line in guitar solos that wouldn’t be out of
place on the Top Gun soundtrack. Their influ-
ences might all be from the same decade but
that doesn’t mean they should be stuck together
20 years later when nobody thought to try it first
time round - there’s a reason that stone was left
unturned.
Who Knew look so young you might refuse
(rightly) to sell them a beer but one thing that be-
came immediately obvious during their first few
songs was that they don’t need alcohol to produce
an outstanding performance. Mixing some tightly
written and sung lyrics, with obvious vocal influ-
ences from Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands
Say Yeah and other similarly face-paced, falsetto-
voiced indie bands, they leapt about in a manner
reminiscent of an early performance by The Lib-
ertines but the memory that remained after clos-
ing time was of a series of complicated-yet-catchy
songs that were performed with gusto.
Like a vast number of new Icelandic bands
Who Knew also threw in a liberal smattering of
electronica but, in comparison to the medium’s
overuse in Jezebel’s earlier performance, the key-
board in ‘Sharpen The Knife’ and the introduc-
tion to ‘Wallabe’ serve to add structure and depth
to what are already very good tracks. In Jezebel
the buttons over-ran everything and ran nothing.
Less, in the case of Who Knew, is definitely more.
‘Wallabe’, ‘Mountains’, ‘Pagan Revolution’,
‘Please Don’t’ and ‘Sharpen The Knife’ are a set of
songs with genuine longevity - most have enough
complexity (listen to ‘Wallabe’s’ pleasingly grad-
ual progression from keyboard solo to full-blown
indie rock or the layers that build up to a glorious
finale on ‘Sharpen The Knife’) and ambition to
not prove tiresome after a dozen listens yet they’re
simple enough to be exposed as great pieces of
song writing when performed in the heady man-
ner of Who Knew. Who’d have known that when
they first walked on stage. Ben H. Murray
When:
October 18-20, 2007
When:
October 25, 2007
Where:
Everywhere
Where:
Organ
Who:
Everybody
Who:
Jezebel
Who Knew
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