Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.05.2019, Blaðsíða 27

Music 27The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 08— 2019
EP
‘Sorry’ is out now. Check it out at
post-dreifing.bandcamp.com.
See bagdad brothers tour dates,
including a US run, at facebook.
com/bagdadbrothers
Bagdad brothers are a sunny in-
die-pop band who’ve been taking
Reykjavík by storm over the past
year. They’ve also become well-
known as political activists. We
asked them to talk us through
their latest EP, ‘Sorry.’
“Like everything else we’ve re-
leased to this point, ‘Sorry’ serves
as a sort of soundtrack to our lives,”
they say. “Since we have a rich ten-
dency to use music as a means of
coping during hard times, these
four tracks are mostly a result of
a seemingly never-ending heart-
break season. They’re our way of
trying to wrap our heads around
some of the roughest, but most
important, experiences of the last
few months.”
Það Varst Ekki Þú
This is a really sad one. It’s about
that moment in the post-break up
process where you think you’re
starting to get over something, but
then one night you just collapse
and feel like you lost the greatest
thing you’ve ever had in your life,
and it was all your fault. The lyrics
(roughly translated) begin with
the line: “It wasn’t you—it was
me.” It’s a moment of completely
depressed desperation—but an
important step in getting over
those feelings.
Sjálfbær Elskhugi
We originally recorded this song
for the first “DRULLUMALL”
compilation album released by
post-dreifing in March last year.
It sort of came out of thin air, in
the middle of a jam session where
we were playing around with a
Roland TR-505 drum machine we
had borrowed from a friend. The
version on “sorry”
features live drums
from Ægir, though.
The lyrics to this
track are actually
full of shit—they’re
the sleep-drunk,
intoxicated mum-
bles of a past lover,
that happened to
be written down. In
hindsight they feel
quite urgent, or at
least fun and inter-
esting: “Should we
die from this cold together? Choke
on each other’s boogers? Wouldn’t
that be romantic?”
Burt Með Sumrinu
So Bjarni has this thing where he
falls in love and then just before
things get really great they end
suddenly because of external cir-
cumstances. This song is about
one of these incidents. Using the
seasons as a metaphor for love and
heartbreak is nothing new in writ-
ing lyrics, but here it just felt nec-
essary. Musically, the song is very
much inspired by Bjarni’s recent
awkward Beatles phase. Backing
vocals are supplied by Silla from
BSÍ and Sillus, Karó from GRÓA
and our dearest Steinunn—and
Sigurpáll!
Strákar
The title of this song simply trans-
lates to “Boys”—and it addresses
our frustration with guys who are
just full of themselves, and ruin
stuff for everyone else. Having,
sadly enough, repeatedly found
ourselves in situations where male
figures from our
lives turn out to
be sexual abus-
ers—having to
deal with that,
and watching
the pain that
toxic masculin-
ity causes in the
lives of people
of all genders,
inspired the
writing of this
song, so it really
means a lot to
us. “Complacency or regret?” is a
question we ask in the lyrics, plac-
ing some weight on the aftermath
of sexual violence—how does one
face the consequences of their
own actions?
“Should we
die from this
cold together?
Choke on each
other’s boogers?
Wouldn’t that be
romantic?”
TRACK BY TRACK
Bagdad Brothers - ‘Sorry’
Iceland's indie sweethearts unravel the lyrical secrets and
back stories behind their most recent EP
Words: John Rogers & bagdad brothers Photo: Art Bicnick
THE HOME
OF ICELANDIC
SEAFOOD
AND LAMB
APOTEK Kitchen+Bar is a casual-smart
restaurant located in one of Reykjavíks
most historical buildings.
We specialize in fresh seafood
and local ingredients
prepared with a modern twist.
APOTEK KITCHEN+BAR Austurstræti 16 101 Reykjavík apotek.is