Reykjavík Grapevine - jan. 2019, Side 34

Our Albums Of
The Year
The Icelandic music you should have heard in 2018
Words: Grapevine Music Dpt.
Deliberating over the Grapevine’s
Music Awards is a difficult pro-
cess—for every winner that we
hand a medal to, there are countless
others who were also jockeying for
position and did great things well
deserving of your attention. With
that in mind, we asked our music
team for their own personal picks
from this excellent year in Icelandic
music.
John Rogers
I love it when something that I’ve
written about crosses over into my
personal record collection and there
were several albums this year that
did exactly that. The most-played of
the bunch was the excellent ‘Light
Is Liquid’ by múm founding mem-
ber Örvar Smárason. It’s a finely
hewn, down-tempo pop album with
a bright, fresh feel; the nicely crafted
songs contain earworm melodies,
but also a lot of space that lets them
breathe. Robotic voices nestle along-
side contributions from rising vocal-
ist sillus and established stars sóley
and JFDR, and the record charts
a lyrically introspective course
through everything from love—or
the lack thereof—to self-worth, and
dealing with the craziness of the
Trump-era global consciousness.
It snuck out this summer when
Örvar was busily touring ‘Team
Dreams,’ and deserves much more
attention. I was also blown away by
a couple of singles by Solveig Mat-
thildur, whose gloomy electronic
pop seems to go from strength to
strength. Her single ‘Affliction/Ab-
solution’ (only available on Band-
camp) is that spine-tingling kind
of stunning; her first English-lan-
guage track ‘Dystopian Boy’ opens
the lyrics up to the English-speak-
ing audience. I was also smitten
with GYDA’s ‘Evolution,’ which
vibrates with a rare, luminous,
soulful sensitivity; aYia’s debut had
enough moments of magic to en-
sure repeat listens; finally, Ólafur
Arnalds’ gently amazing ‘re:mem-
ber’ got a lot of Sunday-morn-
ing spins throughout the year.
Valur Grettisson
There were three albums that pleas-
antly took me by surprise this year,
all of which I’ve listened to relent-
lessly since they were released.
They’re all very different in style,
but all have one thing in common:
some unique individual artistic
breakout. First on the list is the sur-
prise hip-hop album ‘Hasarlífstíll’
by Arnar Úlfur, better known as
half of the hip hop duo Úlfur Úlfur.
Hasarlífstíll is Arnar’s first solo al-
bum, and it has a raw, real and retro
feeling to it—some back-to-basics
elements that the Icelandic hip-
hop scene really needs. It also ex-
posed a new dimension of Arnar as
a musician. I’m looking forward for
something more. Another break-
out this year was SiGRÚN with her
amazing debut ‘Onælan.’ SiGRÚN
gained a lot of experience touring
the world with Björk, Sigur Rós
Music
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