Reykjavík Grapevine - 22.05.2015, Blaðsíða 18

Reykjavík Grapevine - 22.05.2015, Blaðsíða 18
18 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 6 — 2015 performances they crank up their gui- tars loud enough for people to feel it in their bones, and they themselves can be found bouncing all around the stage. “It’s risky going to our concerts,” Jónbjörn says. “You could lose your hearing, so you have to ask yourself if you dare show up.” The songs them- selves are also vola- tile, with the themes based on the band members’ alter egos, who get into fights and are bit- ter about not getting the girl they fancy, although they laughingly ad- mit very few of their lyrics make any kind of real sense. “Then when we go to interviews, people tell us, ‘Shit, I thought you were going to trash the place,’ which is funny because we’re the most relaxed bunch of guys in the world,” Jónbjörn says, laughing. Going with the flow The album that brought the Pink Street Boys acclaim was ‘Trash From The Boys’, a limited-edition laser-en- graved cassette distributed by Lady Boy Records. For all the praise it got, the boys maintain that it wasn’t that big of a deal. “It was just a collection of homemade demos,” Jónbjörn says, “and we’re always recording those.” Conversely, their newly released ‘Hits #1’ is a studio-record- ed album, which they laid down in a single night a year ago at Hljóðriti studio in Hafnarfjörður. “We were well practised so the music flowed very naturally,” Jónbjörn says, “and then we re- corded the vocals in our own studio. We mixed the album our- selves, but we took a fucking long time do- ing it! We had like ten different ver- sions.” Víðir adds that they thought it was very important for their first real album to sound tight. In the aforementioned drunken interview, Axel expressed frustration at how little interest there had been from labels to release their album, but Víðir says that 12 Tónar immediately wanted to sign them after they played Airwaves. Despite being raised on MP3s and digital music, the band opt- ed to make their first release a vinyl, because they’re all really big music nerds. “We hadn’t released anything real, and we’ve been playing for nine years now,” Jónbjörn says. “We just wanted to have our own vinyl.” What would make Jónbjörn even prouder would be for PSB to influ- ence a new generation of musicians. “I want to find fourteen-to-fifteen- year-old boys in a garage playing the same kind of music we do. I’ve scoured the internet, even looking through Myspace, but I’ve only found hip-hop or metal bands.” On the subject of what the future may hold for PSB, the two communi- cate enthusiastically that they would love to tour internationally, pausing before admitting that they haven’t been able to because they’re really bad at organising themselves. “The way that we’ve been working, it’s al- ways been a ‘go with the flow’ scenar- io—we need a manager to deal with plans and that sort of stuff,” Víðir says. For now, what the boys have planned is an album release concert on May 22 with Seint, Godchilla, rus- sian.girls and Singapore Sling. The gig is at Kaffistofan, which is inci- dentally the place where they played their very first gig as PSB. They tell me it’s a space that can only realisti- cally fit 50 people, yet 250 have con- firmed their attendance on Facebook. “It’ll be rocked out, that’s for sure,” Jónbjörn says. Info: Pink Street Boys have an album release concert at Kaffistofan on May 22. Their album ‘Hits #1’ is already available in record stores. When interviewing Muck and Pink Street Boys, we kept thinking, “It would be really interesting to hear the other band’s thoughts on this.” So, rather than engage in lengthy back-and-forths, we invited drummers Ási Þórðarson and Einar Björn Þórarinsson to just hash it out over a pack of beers. What follows is a short chapter from the lightly edited transcript. You can read the full version online. You’ve both said that you are the loudest band in Reykjavík. How well do you think the other band measures up to that claim? Ási: I think the deal with Muck and Pink Street is that they are both the best Icelandic bands around today. What these bands are doing is being real and fuckin’ in your face, and that’s some- thing I don’t think other bands dare to do. Are we the loudest? Yeah, you know, we said we were the loudest, and they said so as well, and we’re both bloody loud. But what really matters is that we’re the best. Einar: Yeah, what he said [Einar laughs]. Ási, you’ve said in a previous interview that you’re a much better drummer than Einar. Is that true? [Both laugh loudly] E: Well, I only started playing drums when Pink Street Boys came around, and that was just two years ago. I’ve been playing bass since I was twelve years old and was in another band with Axel—we had a drummer in that band, but he was always so late to practice so I’d play around on the drums until he ar- rived and teach myself. Á: I remember when Elli Bang [one of Ojba Rasta‘s drummers, Celestine‘s for- mer drummer] was interviewed in the Eistnaflug film, he said, “When I go up on stage, I just think to myself I’m going to fucking demolish the other bands,” and it’s the same for me—I’m simply go- ing to be the best! Much better than the bands that went on before me, and the ones that’ll go after me, and that’s how it is. When I said I was better than Einar on the drums, it was like that, I was talk- ing shit, because when I go on stage, I plan on blowing everyone away. E: That’s exactly what I think about when I go on the drums, I’m just going to put everything into it. Á: And that’s fucking it! The music we’re in, it’s not about a competition, but you have to have a competitive mind-set go- ing into it. You have to be fantastic when you’re on stage, and you motivate your- self up by telling yourself you’re much better than everyone else. Einar, your bandmates talked about how important attitude and alter egos were, and how they set PSB apart from your older bands. Do you also feel that way? E: Oh yeah. Our old band, Dandelion Seeds, was just a 60s psychedelic pop band. We enjoyed it, but we didn’t have nearly as much fun as PSB, where we can blast away and rock out! PSB al- lows us to talk trash, and be dicks [Einar laughs]. Our stage presence is much live- lier, too. Á: How long has it been since a band has talked so much trash and been this pro- vocative in the Icelandic music scene? When I first saw PSB live, I thought it was the same fucking shit as Klink or Mínus! It was a fucking dangerous band! It was exactly what was needed, and they gave Muck a real kick in the ass, shifting us into the right gear and away from the neutered Icelandic music scene. To be fucking angry and fucking scream and talk trash, that’s what it’s about, and that’s why people are abso- lutely eating up everything that PSB is doing, because it’s provoking. E: It’s funny how everything changes— one year it’s really good to be super sen- sitive and in touch with your emotions, and then the next being cocky is in, and then now it’s about being angry, but this fashion, it’s all really so trivial. PSB had numerous names, includ- ing Kid Twist and Dandelion Seeds, before settling on their current one, while Muck were Muck from day one. Why do you think the other band went the way they did with their choosing their name? E: That’s a really good question. Á: I think fundamentally it’s the wrong question to ask [Both laugh loudly]. It’s because PSB are not Dandelion Seeds, and they’re not Kid Twist. They’re not changing their name, these are com- pletely new bands. E: Yeah, we changed everything. But Muck, has it always been the same band? Á: Yeah, we’ve been the same, except, well, we fired our singer Villi [Ási laughs]. There were five of us at one point, and we had another bass player, but we fired him pretty quickly because he played terribly. When we recorded our ‘Vultures’ album, he was so bad that we had to ask Addi from Celestine to re- cord over them. E: Did you ever tell him about it? Á: No, we didn’t, and he never found out. Whoops, sorry, I think he knows now. [Both laugh loudly] -- Read the full article at www.grapevine.is. D R U M M E R V S . D R U M M E R Muck vs. Pink Street Boys: The Loudest Band In Iceland? “I want to find fourteen-to-fifteen- year-old boys in a garage playing the same kind of music we do. I’ve scoured the internet, even looking through Myspace, but all I’ve found have been hip-hop or metal bands.”

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