Reykjavík Grapevine - 06.10.2017, Side 35

TRACK BY TRACK
‘Fjallaloft’ By
Moses Hightower
Words: Hannah Jane Cohen and Moses Hightower
LP
Out now
Moses Hightow-
er is known for
skillful playing, soothing voices,
and advanced compositions. A
live review from the Grapevine
once said their performance,
“[made] the audience feel like
they were right in the band’s
living room." The group recently
released their third album, so re-
lax in your living room and enter
the world of ‘Fjallaloft’ (‘Mountain
Air’).
Trúnó
The organ, bass and drums in
‘Trúnó’ are the oldest recordings
on the album. We had some spare
studio time after recording a
jingle for a recycling PSA in…2013?
Holy crap, the song is that old! We
liked the spontaneous, lopsided
feel of that session so we kept it.
The lyrics, like the song, convey
the sort of dream logic that gov-
erns late night conversations.
Fjallaloft
We had the darnedest time
figuring ‘Fjallaloft’ out. We liked
the chorus, the verse, the outro,
but they were clearly from three
different songs. After a while, we
stopped trying to make the parts
fit and instead made them even
more disjointed. Suddenly it be-
came a song that made us smile.
Snefill
We don’t generally do “fast”, but
this song comes pretty close. We
wrote it as a kind of slow burner,
but then got bored and decided
to give it a shot in the arm. The
result is probably the peppiest
song ever written about a person
lying absolutely still.
Geim
‘Geim’ is a sweet ballad about
the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
impacting Jupiter framed as an
ill-advised one night stand. Yeah,
not very subtle. There’s also a ter-
restrial love story going on which
has a happier ending.
Feikn
This is our first song featuring
guitarist Danni’s beautiful lead vo-
cals. Our first attempts at record-
ing a country song were a little
too on-the-nose, but after a while
Maggi came up with a pattern of
overdubbed percussion that we
felt put it into a space of its own.
Skyttan
‘Skyttan’ is a bit of a Frankensong.
The verse is the head of a de-
pressed gospel preacher grafted
onto the body of the chorus,
which is a Honda Civic driven by
pimply teenagers listening to ‘The
Chronic’ in 1994.
Mjóddin
Maggi spent the Decembers of his
youth wearing a band costume,
playing Christmas songs with
a school band in a strange and
wonderful place called Mjóddin—
a mini-mall and bus terminal that
today seems like a 1980s ruined
cathedral. The call-and-response
bridge was a late addition—the
song was a little too smooth and
needed a shake-up towards the
end.
Reynimelur
This guitar riff had been kicking
around Danni’s brain for years.
One day we put a Jobimesque
melody to it with lyrics that starts
out as a sweet letter home but
quickly goes off-script.
Suma daga
This is probably our favorite
performance on ‘Fjallaloft.’ Maggi
played two lighters into a micro-
phone, flicking them on and off
until his fingers bled. The breath-
ing sounds are Steini at the piano.
He tried to be quiet, but the mics
were turned up really loud so it
sounds like we called in Darth
Vader to play sexy piano.
Ýmis mál
By this point, we’d had enough
of trying to make pop music out
of everything, so we just went to
town on the chorus. At this mo-
ment, decades of playing tasteful
and understated beats finally
wore Maggi down. Deep within,
something snapped. A herd of
nameless beasts stampeded
behind his bloodshot eyes as his
sticks bore down on the drums
like meteors. Then it was over, but
we all saw it. And we were afraid.
Gætur
There’s a guitar playing in the
desert, Andri crooning about inti-
macy and uncertain silences, and
also some polyphonic harmony
goblins. Then it comes back home
to the warm guitar, and hopefully
everyone’s left feeling happy.
35The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 18 — 2017
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