Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.06.2007, Qupperneq 19

0_REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 07_007_REVIEWS/MUSIC/LIVE
As a part of the Take Me Down to Reykjavík
City concert series, the Grapevine assembled
a handful of upstart bands from Reykjavík to
showcase at Iðnó. The historical theatre house
is not typically used for shows, even though
it has a spacious main ballroom and a sizable
antechamber. Sound at the theatre is clean
and relatively professional; that is, when the
bands aren’t cutting out every minute or so.
But we’ll get to that later.
American singer-songwriter Sam Amidon
started the show with a set of what he claimed
to be “old American songs,” but I’m pretty
sure I heard some Tears for Fears in there. The
native Vermonter’s first few songs sounded like
an impressive mixture of southern folk and the
Red House Painters. However, in the middle of
one particularly gorgeous number he belted
out two horrific shrieks, with accompanying
eerie facial expressions. People carefully began
to move away from the front of the stage in
what seemed to be an act of self-defence.
Fight or flight. A last minute addition, Amidon
and his antics didn’t seem to fit in with the
seriousness of the other bands that night.
As for Hjaltalín, I typically get sceptical
when a band I haven’t seen before gets on
stage with instruments like the bassoon, the
accordion or the cello. It can go either way
with these bands: either they rock (like The
Arcade Fire) or they come out overblown and
pretentious, using layered instruments to cover
up bad songwriting (think The Decemberists).
Fortunately, Hjaltalín ended up being more like
the former. The band had a well-rehearsed set,
the power of Högni Egilsson’s lilting voice, and
numerous clever string arrangements. “Good-
bye July” was among the best performances
that night.
As far as the hype surrounding FM Belfast
goes, I’m sold. The members dressed up like
my grandparents and furiously dryhumped ev-
erything in sight. Mastermind Árni +1 fingered
away at a sticker-covered Mac while the others
sang in high, cooing voices. With strong beats
and scattered electronic blips and bleeps, they
had at least 5% of the crowd dancing (which
was more than any other band that night).
Without a doubt, the sassy FM Belfast stole
the show.
I should say that if Sprengjuhöllin is the
least impressive band on your ticket, you’re
doing something right. The quintet isn’t going
to break new musical ground anytime soon,
but they do the pop thing well. An Icelandic
rendition of the Motown favourite Heatwave
was the highlight of their set.
On came the long awaited (and debuting!)
Motion Boys. Quite unexpectedly, singer Birgir
Ísleifur opened up with a solo, an unplugged
version of Hold Me Closer to Your Heart on the
electric piano. A group chorus of “hoos” at the
interlude indicated that a lot of the audience
had done their homework. The band came
out and played a few songs together, when
suddenly the power blew out. The band, being
either valiant troopers or too deaf to hear that
they’d lost their loud keyboards, continued
their song before finally realising that they had
rocked too hard. The Boys looked unscathed,
but the crowd was obviously disappointed.
Eventually, Birgir Ísleifur finished the set solo
and unplugged to a diminishing crowd.
The Night the PA System Blew
Text by Chandler Fredrick Photo by Gulli
Who: Motion Boys, Sprengjuhöllin,
FM Belfast and Hjaltalín
Where: Iðnó
When: May 24, 2007
The venue in East London known as Catch does
have a catch – it’d be easier to track down one
of the Jule lads in June than locate this bar,
situated just outside the city’s main financial
district in the fashionably scruffy Shoreditch
area. Thankfully, the lost late-comers (and there
were many) didn’t miss a note as Benni Hemm
Hemm took some time to make the transition
from tuning their plethora of instrumentation
to full orchestral magnificence.
At this point I have to admit that I was
rather spoiled by my previous Benni Hemm
Hemm experience. I saw them perform a joy-
ous pre-Christmas gig in a Reykjavík theatre
late last year with about 15 band members,
including a full brass section supporting Bene-
dikt Hermannsson’s whisper-smooth vocals
and gentle guitar playing. Sadly, not all of the
extended band members were present (the
seven who did make the journey to London
packed the small stage with a trombone, trum-
pet, horn, drums and various guitars) but they
more than made up for their lack of numbers
with a genuinely delightful evening of unique
music.
Fight is one of the band’s few English lan-
guage songs and its down-tempo attitude
doesn’t showcase the band’s ability too well in
comparison to their grander Icelandic-language
songs, despite having some nice poetic lyrics
about falling out with a spouse on a grey day.
Other tracks from Kajak, their triumphant last
album, followed and included the brilliantly
bold Brekken plus “the saddest song ever writ-
ten in Icelandic”, a slow-burning lullaby which
was dedicated to the aluminium factories that
are irreparably scarring Iceland’s landscape.
When you see Benni Hemm Hemm it’s the
little details that make them so memorable:
the little zipping sound of a finger scraping
against a guitar string as the chord changes;
the brass instruments, including the eternally
jolly French horn player, gently fading in and
out of each song; and the pint glass of dried
peas that joined the band. The peas were
housed in a plastic beer glass with their own
microphone and whenever the band reached
one of their many crescendos the peas danced
a merry jig in the glass, with a little help from
the bass instruments, and added to the sound
with a rhythmic rattling. Some were lost in ac-
tion but thankfully the multi-tasking trumpet
player had peas in reserve.
After Benni Hemm Hemm departed the
crammed stage to much applause from the
modest crowd, the-band-that-nobody-dared-
to-try-and-pronounce took their place and
treated the audience to some lively folk rock
instrumental work. Stórsveit Nix Noltes, to give
them their full name, consists of two mysteri-
ously beautiful ladies on accordion and violin
and assorted members of Benni Hemm Henm
and friends on various other instruments. The
sound is chaotic, but not overly so, and could
be likened to a gang of delinquent Romanian
gypsies – who can hold their vodka and still
turn out a decent tune or three – running riot
at an Icelandic wedding party. Despite not hav-
ing a single vocal contribution in their whole
set, they offered something a little different to
Benni Hemm Hemm and something very differ-
ent to the dozens of guitar-based bands that
were also playing in Shoreditch that night.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in London
Text and photo by Ben H. Murray
Who: Benni Hemm Hemm and Stór-
sveit Nix Noltes
Where: Catch, London
When: May 21, 2007
REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 07_007_OPINION_1
“You know what I think should be done about
Flateyri? Nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a kilo
of quota should go their way. No last-minute
operations to glaze over the grim facts-of-
the-matter, no patch on the gaping wound.
Nothing.”
Sitting in the now-abolished smoking sec-
tion of Ísafjörður pub/café Langi Mangi my
companion, a journalist for local newspaper
BB, lit a cigarette, chugged the last of his beer
and finished his sentiment. “It’s time people
get confronted with the harsh reality of this
system. Head on. It is doing exactly what it was
designed for; this is how it works, this is what
it amounts to and this is what they voted for,
continually. So let them enjoy it!”
What should be done about Flateyri in-
deed? Mere days after the parliamentary elec-
tions, word got out that the proprietors of
Flateyri’s biggest employer (“sole employer” is
hardly an overstatement), fishery Kambur, were
liquidating the business. 120 townspeople,
nearly half the population, stand to lose their
jobs this fall. Their given reasons: inflation, the
resulting strength of the Króna against foreign
currencies and the high cost of renting quota
(the highly debated Icelandic fishing regulatory
system deserves many lengthy essays. It is quota
based, and a few large fisheries now possess
a huge portion of the allotted quota. Smaller
businesses and independent operators need to
rent theirs at a considerable price). Kambur’s
owners will of course walk away with consider-
able sums of money. That’s business.
Regular readers of the Grapevine may re-
member learning about Flateyri in issue 12 of
last year, in an article entitled Flateyri and the
fate of small town Iceland. It mainly dealt with
the town’s continually diminishing size, its one-
horse economy and the fact that an estimated
third of it’s population of 300 (down from
500 in its heyday) is comprised of immigrants
and immigrant-workers from Poland and the
Philippines who sometimes have trouble fully
adapting and participating in local culture. It
portrayed a still proud small-town, struggling
to find its legs in modernity following a series
of setbacks.
One of the people I interviewed for said
article was Halldór Halldórsson, mayor of Ísaf-
jarðarbær, the coalition township that unites
Flateyri with several (closely) neighbouring
towns. While he agreed that Flateyri had its
fair share of problems, he expressed optimism
for its future. “There’s plenty of jobs to be
had,” he told me, “even though we need to
import labour to operate the business [Kambur’s
workforce is 90% immigrant]. Kambur is doing
extremely well. The company had a record-year
last year [2005], processing a full 8.000 tons
of products.”
So much for record-years.
So much for jobs to be had.
Luckily, God (or the Icelandic government)
rarely closes a door without opening some
windows. And behold! The viability of estab-
lishing a large-scale oil refinery in the vicinity of
Flateyri is already being researched and seriously
discussed. It would provide the people of the
northern Westfjords with 5-600 additional jobs.
And they need them, as it is evident that the
fishing industry on which these towns were
originally founded has left the area for good,
the region’s allotted quota quietly traded away
by the robber barons that built (and later dis-
mantled) their empires there. These are
the Icelandic equivalents of Flint, Michigan. This
is how the system works: it is doing exactly
what it was designed for.
Icelanders often speak of problems facing
small communities such as Flateyri, problems
shared by most if not all of the small towns
lining the island’s shoreline, problems for which
behemoth aluminium smelting plants (and
now oil-refineries) are often our government’s
proposed solution.
Here are some examples:
-Educated youngsters aren’t returning to the
communities that fostered them. This is some-
times referred to as brain drain.
-Government jobs are severely unevenly distrib-
uted around the country. Save for a precious
few, most of them are located in Reykjavík, even
those positions founded during the last decade
when it was evident that smaller towns would
need the boost they could provide.
-Uniting with neighbouring towns (way of
the future!) meant forfeiting certain modes
of employment, such as common commerce
and service jobs. As a result, available jobs are
pointedly un-diverse.
-Most of the community is employed by a
single company.
-A large part of that company’s workforce (at
Kambur: 90%) is comprised of immigrants.
-Language-barriers and scarce educational re-
sources often isolate said immigrant portion
from the rest of the community, making it hard
for them to fully integrate.

Surely, heavy industry will serve to solve these
problems for good.
The Fate of Small Town Iceland
Text by Haukur S. Magnússon
Luckily, God (or the Icelandic government) rarely
closes a door without opening some windows.
On May 15th, the President of Iceland, Ólafur
Ragnar Grímsson, officially opened the Iceland
Carbon Fund’s website at a prestigious gather-
ing with great fanfare and media attention.
The founding partners of the fund are the
NGOs the Icelandic Forestry Association and
the Icelandic Environment Association, while
the Government of Iceland, Reykjavík Energy,
and Kaupþing Bank supply the financial as-
sistance.
The aim of the Iceland Carbon Fund is to
finance forestry in Iceland in order to dispel the
effects of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide
(CO2) in the atmosphere. Plants and vegetation
bind CO2 through photosynthesis, turning the
carbon (C) into plant mass, while releasing the
oxygen (O2). The combination of continuing
deforestation, and the ever-increasing release
of CO2, mostly from transportation, is among
the main contributors to global warming, so
forestry seems to be an obvious path to pursue
in the battle against greenhouse gases. In that
context, the Iceland Carbon Fund is obviously
a noble idea.
Let me make one thing clear from the
start. I fully believe that the Iceland Carbon
Fund was created with the best of intentions
and that the people behind it believed they
were doing a genuinely good thing. And the
idea per se, to bind CO2 through forestry, is
a genuinely good idea.
Still, something has gone horribly wrong.
The fund offers individuals, companies and
organizations the opportunity to ‘neutralise’
their yearly CO2 emission from transporta-
tion by paying for the planting of a sufficient
number of trees to reverse the effects of the
CO2 they produce. To that end, the Govern-
ment of Iceland has ‘neutralised’ all their flights
to foreign shores this year. And yes, that is
probably a shitload of trees, in case you were
wondering. Myself? Well, I would need to pay
the Iceland Carbon Fund around 5000 ISK to
plant 35 trees to CO2 neutralise the family’s
trusted Opel Zafira.
And how is this a bad thing you may ask?
Well, think of it in this context. In the past,
the church sold absolution. If you committed
a very small sin, you would buy the budget
package and be absolved from your sin, but
for a really big sin, say rape and pillage, you
were obviously required to contribute more.
See the similarities?
In their defence, it must be said that on the
Iceland Carbon Fund’s website it is stated that
this should not be regarded as an absolution of
sins. They point out that the most effective way
of meeting the challenge of global warming
is not to neutralise CO2 emission, but to seek
ways to reduce CO2 emission. But, as I stated
before, it is not really the Icelandic Carbon
Fund that is causing me concern.
It has hardly been two weeks since the
project got off its feet, and already car dealer-
ships are running ad campaigns claiming that
every car they sell is environmentally friendly,
since the dealership will pay for neutralising,
nay, absolving, your new car’s CO2 emission…
for the first year. This sounds all too much like
the delusional gambler who always intends to
pay off his gambling debts with the next big
win.
Now we are being bombarded with mes-
sages from companies that have miraculously
become “CO2 neutral.” Suddenly, every prod-
uct you may want to buy is ‘green,’ because
somewhere, someone is planting trees in-
stead and now there is no real need for you
to change your pattern of consumption. In
the hands of the market, being green is not
question of survival; it is a question of pushing
a product.
In reality, forestry is a band-aid fix that does
nothing to eliminate the real problem, which
is the un-sustainable mode of living that we
have chosen. We need to reduce greenhouse
gases by actually driving less, not by driving
more. Forestry should be our way of bringing
down CO2 emission, and there is certainly
enough to go around, not neutralising added
CO2 emission. Myself, I bought a bike and
stopped driving to work.
Sending out the message that it is even
possible to somehow stay ‘neutral,’ when it
comes to global warming is wrong. We should
not entertain the idea of staying on the side-
lines when it comes to this fight. As of now,
we all belong in the ring.
To bring the discussion to a close, I applaud
every true effort to protect the environment,
but being truly green takes more than slapping
a bumper sticker at the back of your car.
Kolviður:
A Noble Idea Gone Wrong
Text by Sveinn Birkir Björnsson
This sounds all too much like the delusional gambler
who always intends to pay off his gambling debts
with the next big win.
GREEN
C
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
CMY
K
midi-concerts. df 4/11/07 10:55:30 AM
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