Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.11.2016, Page 21

Jófríður Ákadóttir is very tired. She
sits slumped on the red leather sofa of a
comfortably dim downtown basement
café, sipping a coffee; her pale blue eyes
stare out onto the street, where groups of
people meander past, their laughter and
American, German, French and Cana-
dian accents drifting in through the win-
dow. It’s the peak of the Iceland Airwaves
festival, and Reykjavík is buzzing.
“I’m just exhausted,” she says, in
her quiet, articulate voice. “Just, life…
personal stuff. It’s been really dark
this year.”
The issue at hand is that her twin
sister Ásthildur, her partner in the
much-admired folk-pop band Pas-
cal Pinon, has pulled out of a German
tour that begins just a few days after
the festival, for health reasons. As well
as performing seven shows with three
different bands, and despite count-
less engagements like soundchecks,
interviews, photo shoots and sessions,
Jófríður is hastily putting together an
ensemble to carry out the tour, at the
busiest time of the year for Icelandic
musicians.
“I sometimes have to remind my-
self that I’m doing this because I enjoy
it,” she says, sighing deeply. “I forget
sometimes. It’s addictive… just going,
and going, and going. I’ve been doing
it for the last two years. And finally in
September I had a month to just chill.
I collapsed, kind of. There were days
where I couldn’t stand up. I was kind
of depressed. I knew that it was com-
ing, because I was pushing so hard.
Then it came. But after five days, it just
stopped.
“It was life telling
me to rest.”
No sooner has she said those words
than her phone lights up with a new
message. We’ve already run over—it’s
time for another interview around
the corner before her next show, un-
der her solo moniker of JFDR, an hour
later. Jófríður pulls on a coat and with
apologies, air kisses and a promise to
regroup soon, she’s gone—back out
into the busy streets, and the colour-
ful, chaotic torrent of Airwaves.
Journey
Across the course of the festival, Jó-
fríður is everywhere. One minute,
she’s darting over a street crossing
headed to her off-venue performance
in Grandi with electronica trio Sa-
maris; later on, she’s jumping around
in Húrra at the show by her friends
in aYia. Later still, she’s onstage once
more at Gamla Bíó, resplendent in a
white coat and fox-fur scarf, swaying
and singing over the dreamy pop of
GANGLY. For all of her understandable
fatigue, she seems in high spirits and
fine musical form.
When we convene again on Sunday,
Airwaves is coming to a close. Jófríður
collapses into a cushion-covered sofa,
weary but cheerful. She is planning to
pull an all-nighter and head to the air-
port at 3am for that German tour. Her
last-minute band is coming together,
and she’ll have a few nights of rest in
Berlin. It seems like Jófríður’s journey
never ends. But where did it begin?
“My mum played classical clarinet
while we were in the womb,” she says.
“So I have this romantic idea that me
and Ásthildur had these sound waves
going through us as we were growing.
They met through music. My dad’s a
trumpet player. They were kids them-
selves when they had us: just nineteen
years old. Then we got another sister.
We never lacked anything, but we did
have to be a little independent. And we
had each other.”
Deciding to follow in her mother’s
footsteps, Jófríður took up the clarinet
aged just six, and as they grew older
the twins were often taken to their
parents’ performances. “My dad was in
lots of bands,” Jófríður says. “So when
we were twelve we’d get to go to gigs
and jump around and dance a bit, peek
in the venue, or go backstage and get
a free Sprite. It was really exciting. We
got exposed to that world very early.
Maybe that’s why we felt like we could
just go ahead and do it—that world felt
very accessible to us.”
Just doing it
The twins were barely fourteen when
they started Pascal Pinon. But it wasn’t
their first project together. “We’d been
making music before then on Garage-
band,” smiles Jófríður. “We made an
album for our dad as a birthday pres-
ent. We started a band called Við og
Tölvan, or ‘We And The Computer.’
We gave it to him and he said: ‘What’s
this project called?’ And Ásthildur just
said… ‘We… and the computer!’ I re-
member that so vividly.”
“That was such a beautiful era,” she
continues. “We didn’t understand the
purpose of headphones. We just re-
corded things, put funny MIDI sounds
on top. There was click bleed and you
could hear all kinds of background
sound.” She pauses and laughs: “It was
very experimental.”
Pascal Pinon started as a four-piece
band. Jófríður slipped into a leader-
ship role, finding that songwriting
came naturally—so naturally, in fact,
that it caused some early tensions with
her young collaborators. “I didn’t un-
derstand, being young and naive, that
it just wasn’t as easy for the others in
Pascal Pinon to write songs,” she says.
“I remember being angry and saying:
‘Why don’t you write a song this time?’
I wasn’t approaching it in a positive
way. In the end, we had a conversa-
tion about it and decided to continue
the band as just me and Ásthildur, and
save the friendship.”
The duo went on to self-produce
and self-release their first album in
Iceland. “We were fifteen years old and
going into business,” she says, “going
into record shops and signing deals.
There were people who wanted to re-
lease it, but our dad encouraged us to
do it all ourselves. We were never like:
‘We’re too young to be doing this.’ We
just did it.”
The Year
Of Jófríður
With four bands
and boundless talent,
Jófríður Ákadóttir is
Iceland’s brightest
young star
Words John Rogers
Photos Timothée Lambrecq & Hörður Sveinsson
21The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 17 — 2016