Reykjavík Grapevine - des. 2021, Blaðsíða 12

Global Roots
Eivør’s music crosses cultural and linguistic borders
Words: John Pearson Photos: Sigga Ella
“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” offers
Faroese musician Eivør Pálsdóttir
as she settles into an office chair.
“I miss it all the time.” Of course,
she’s not referring to The Grape-
vine’s pleasant but essentially
rather functional business prem-
ises. She’s referring to Iceland; her
erstwhile home, and a place long
close to her heart.
Eivør’s love affair with this
country began back in the late
nineties, when Reykjavík vocal
coach Ólöf Kolbrún would travel to
the Faroe Islands to teach singing.
The teenaged Eivør was taking les-
sons with her by day, but by night
was straining her larynx fronting
Nordic-noir rock band Clickhaze.
Alarmed by how her student’s
pure soprano was tumbling to-
wards Janis Joplin territory—and
not in a good way— Ólöf Kolbrún
invited Eivør to stay with her in
Reykjavík for a spell of vocal rest
and rehabilitation. Eivør packed
her bag, and flew the next day.
“It turned out to be life-chang-
ing for me, and it really just put
me on a different route,” Eivør
says of Ólöf Kolbrún’s kind act.
“We became very good friends,
and she was my vocal teacher for
many years. And I made so many
friends here in Iceland, including
musicians, that I ended up staying
here for five years.”
In the two decades since, Eivør
has divided her time between
Reykjavík, Copenhagen and her
home in the Faroes. And she has
forged a remarkable career, devel-
oping her distinctive and diverse
sound to encompass folk, jazz,
world and dark electronic pop in-
fluences; collecting their threads
together, and tethering them to a
solid anchor of global roots mu-
sic that has struck a chord with
people around the globe. Her top
ten tracks on Spotify now have a
combined total of 34 million plays,
and last month she received the
prestigious Nordic Council Music
Prize.
Fertile islands for
creative roots
A tiny set of islands rising out of
the north Atlantic, roughly half-
way between Iceland and the coast
of Norway, the Faroes are a geo-
graphically remote place to grow
up. But they also support a cultur-
ally fertile society.
“There is so much great art
and music that’s being created all
the time,” Eivør says, when asked
about her creative roots. “I think it
might have something to do with
it being a small community and
so people know each other. Maybe
that puts rings in the water; you
inspire each other to create, be-
cause you're closer. But another
theory is that it's a small place and
people get bored, so they have to be
creative!”
Faroese folk music puts the
singing voice at the centre of its
tradition, so it comes as no sur-
prise that Eivør chose that instru-
ment as her first means of musi-
cal expression. And her expansive
world view led her to write in ei-
ther Faroese or English. Or both,
as was the case when she simul-
taneously wrote and released two
albums in 2015; ‘Slør’ in Faroese,
and ‘Bridges’ in English.
But that point in her career
represented a change in approach,
Eivør recalls: “After that, I just
started not worrying so much
about the language. Now when I
write a song, I just start writing
it. And if it wants to be in Faro-
ese I just let it be, but some songs
sound better in English. It’s like
instrumentation. I might choose
the electric guitar because it just
fits better than the acoustic. It’s a
sound.”
The purest instrument
The idea of voice as a pure instru-
ment of music—rather than lan-
guage—echoes Eivør’s adoption of
throat singing, a style that crept
into her repertoire after she met
Canadian vocalist Tanya Tagaq.
“She taught me a little trick
once, just for fun, then I didn't
think about it for years,” Eivør re-
calls. “Then at one of my shows, I
was singing my song 'Trøllabun-
din' and all of a sudden I was
feeling it. And I was like, ‘Whoa!
What's happening?’”
At this point a deep, guttural,
percussive sound starts to flow
strikingly from Eivør; it resembles
how a wild animal might sound
having mastered the art of beat-
boxing. And then the sound stops.
“So then that just became a part of
the song,” she concludes.
“Trøllabundin” is by far her
most st rea med
track, w ith the
current count of
13.5 million Spoti-
fy plays making it
three times more
popular than its
closest rival in
her canon. It has
become a staple
of her live set, and
concert versions
now often include
the throat sing-
ing component.
It’s the dynamic nature of stage
performance—the freedom that
songs have to grow as they’re per-
formed—which appeals to Eivør
about live music.
“Because I play so many shows,
along the way I feel like ‘Let's
loosen this part up. Let's make
it longer. I'm gonna sing it like
this.’ And that is something that
can only happen when you play
something 100 times,” she says.
“So that's why I love making live
albums, because they always have
something that I can't capture in
the studio. For me, that's where all
the magic lives—in a live concert.
That's where I discover stuff.”
Old traditions, new
directions
Another staple of Eivør’s live
shows is her shamanic drum,
which has become somewhat em-
blematic for her and forms the
sole instrumentation on “Trøl-
labundin”.
“That drum is not a Faroese
instrument. We don't have any
traditional Faroese instruments;
like in Iceland, it’s all about the
singing,” she says. “But I was
walking down the street in Nor-
way, and I met a shaman who
was selling drums. I had never in
my life played a drum, and I had
never even thought about buying a
drum. But he made such beautiful
instruments, I bought this drum.
I just took it to my hotel and im-
mediately wrote “Trøllabundin”,
and the drum has been with me
ever since.”
That track, with its simple
primal beat, and guttural throat
singing, has taken Eivør’s career
in unexpected directions. Com-
poser John Lunn—who had been
commissioned to soundtrack the
British Viking drama ‘The Last
Kingdom’—heard “Trøllabundin''
and got in touch to see if Eivør
would be interested in providing
some vocals. They got together in
London, hit it off straight away,
and the singer’s role in the project
quickly expanded into composi-
tion.
Taking on this
novel cha l lenge
has led her into a
whole new area of
creativity, since
writing for fi lm
requires a very dif-
ferent approach to
writing for your-
self. “You write in
a different way to
when you write a
song,” Eivør ob-
serves. “Film mu-
sic is all about the
emotion that you have to provoke
from that scene. You can’t over-
rule the scene; you have to support
it.”
More soundtrack work is on
her slate for next year, and with a
new album on the way and head-
line tours in the US and Europe,
Eivør will no doubt continue to
expand her horizons. Her remark-
able creative energy will always be
welcome in Iceland, and no doubt
anywhere else on the globe that
she chooses to call home.
Culture
“I made so
many friends
here in Iceland,
including
musicians,
that I ended up
staying.”
12The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12— 2021