Underskog

Etter å ha spilt på by:Larm i februar, kommer hun nå til Cafe Mono .

Ólöf Arnalds som tidligere har spillt med bandet Múm blir sammenlignet med blant annet Vashti Bunyan, Judee Sill and Kate Bush.

Given its negligible population numbers, Iceland?s roll call of innovative, internationally recognized musical luminaries is nothing short of prodigious and the worldwide influence of the likes of Björk and Sigur Rós remains pervasive. So, when those aforementioned artists bestow their imprimaturs on a rising star, it is time for the rest of us to take note and register Iceland?s newest, and perhaps most beguiling musical gift to the world: Ólöf Arnalds. Classically educated on the violin and self-taught on viola, guitar and charango (a small, Latin American stringed instrument of the lute family), Ólöf?s most distinctive asset is, nonetheless, her voice. A voice of instantly captivating, spring water chasteness possessed of a magical, otherworldly quality that is simultaneously innocent yet ancient (“somewhere between a child and an old woman” according to no less an authority than Björk).

A folk artist in so far as she is a storyteller in song, generally backed by the minimum of acoustic instruments, Ólöf is not, by her own admission, a songwriter hidebound by the strictures of genre or cultural tradition. While she has been favourably compared with the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Judee Sill and Kate Bush, Ólöf?s approach to the folk form remains highly individual: playful but intimate; accessible and uplifting, yet deeply personal and suffused with a timeless mystique that goes beyond the puckish inscrutability of her native tongue.

Born in Reykjavik in 1980, into a music-loving family, Ólöf was a student of violin from the age of eight and began playing in bands at 15. She gravitated towards the guitar during her later teens as she began to explore songwriting. She would later return to the violin but, having grown impatient with the instrument, temporarily abandoned it and turned her formal musical studies toward classical singing under a highly influential teacher, Ruth Little Magnússon, who schooled her in folk song and how to use the voice as an instrument.

To complete her education, Ólöf took a degree in composition and new media at Reykjavik?s Icelandic Academy Of The Arts. Ólöf would quickly prove herself a magnetic, utterly self-assured stage performer, reliant as much on screwball humour, vaudevillian charm and even outright bawdiness, as much as the contrasting delicacy of her song delivery. Having charmed audiences all over Europe and North America in support of Við Og Við, Ólöf has proved herself a natural when it comes to „reading? an audience, preferring good-humoured spontaneity to the dictates of a set list. She?s as likely to deliver an old Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash or Jimmie Dale Gilmore chestnut as she is one of her own songs.

Originally released by Reykjavik?s 12 Tónar label (and later issued internationally by One Little Indian), Við Og Við was an Icelandic cause célèbre which would go on to reverberate gently but decisively around the globe. Recorded by Sigur Rós?s Kjartan Sveinsson, directly to tape, it?s an album of ingeniously adorned whole take performances, whose charged minimalism creates an inimitable world of its own. “A lot of it was just the two of us in the studio, working in the same room,” says Ólöf of recording with Sveinsson at Sigur Rós?s Sundlaugin (Swimming Pool) studio, at Álafoss.

Each of the self-penned essays (alongside her Megas cover version), is about one or other of Ólöf?s dearest friends or family members, she explains. “In „Klara?, I?m encouraging my younger sister to do creative things with her life. „Moldin? („Soil?) is about letting go of my father when he passed away and „Í Nýju Húsi? („Changing Places?) is like a lullaby, built on a melody my mother would sing to put me to sleep, wishing her a good sleep in her new house.” The lyrics to the album?s closing track, „Ævagömul Orkuþula? („An Archaic Chant To Summon Energy?), were penned by Ólöf?s late father, Einar, “to be used as a mantra to quiet the mind”. Ólöf has spoken of her father?s loss being central to the songwriting on Við Og Við and the poignant, universal theme of “someone staying with you even though he has departed” pervades the lyrics while somehow also transcending them, implanting itself even in non-Icelandic speakers. Við Og Við would duly accrue a sheaf of accolades at home, including Best Alternative Album at the Iceland Music Awards and a Record of the Year gong from Iceland?s principal daily newspaper, Morgunblaðið. Further afield, it would elicit gushing notices from the likes of The New York Times, Vanity Fair, NME and SPIN and prompt MOJO to herald Ólöf as “Reykjavik?s answer to Kate Bush.” Time Out New York described her having “… the kind of voice that can silence a room, such is its sweetness”, while Rolling Stone described her songs being “fragile as tiny china swans”.

Meanwhile, Paste magazine would dub Við Og Við “impossibly lovely” and vote it Number 38 in its Top 100 album list. Not to be outdone, eMusic named it among the 100 best albums of the decade. The birth of her first child inevitably signaled a shift in emphasis. “Being a mother has changed me a lot,” she says. “It?s sharpened my will and forced me to use my time well.” Ólöf?s pregnancy would inspire the title track of her next album, Innundir Skinni (Under The Skin). Produced once again at Sundlaugin by Kjartan Sveinsson and co-produced by Davíð Þór Jónsson, Innundir Skinni was recorded throughout 2009.

The album boasts more extensive instrumentation and additional players than on Við Og Við while retaining Ólöf?s preferred studio modus operandi. “The basic track is always live voice and guitar/charango recorded at the same time, in one take. This time, more often than not, it was with one or more musicians in the room contributing their parts at the same time.” For all the hard work and auxiliary assistance, the resulting Innundir Skinni feels effortless; the additional musicians? performances woven into the body of the songs, never overpowering them, with Ólöf?s typically empyrean vocals upfront and proud.

The opening track, „Vinur Minn? („My Friend?) sets the tone. Both intimate and mischievous, it begins as a wistful, a capella reverie before taking wing on an updraft of drums, brass, strings and a soaring, ad hoc choir and builds inexorably into a stirring, fiesta-like, la la la sing-along; a wordless, but irrefutable distillation of pure joy. Elsewhere, the album?s title track and first single (backed by a delightful cover of Arthur Russell?s „Close My Eyes?) rolls forward on a touching melody that folds in on itself with exquisite simplicity.

It offers another kind of elation; the tender awe implicit in carrying a child. The ensuing „Crazy Car? – a duet with Ragnar Kjartansson (husband of visual artist Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, the artist charged with creating Innundir Skinni?s distinctive visuals) is Ólöf?s first recorded song delivered in English – one of three on the album. It?s spontaneity and charm, as much as two albums of sublime song craft and ineffable, unforced Icelandic charisma, which make Ólöf Arnalds such a uniquely appealing musician into whose confidence we listeners can?t help but want to be taken.

Soon after being first exposed to her music, Björk was quick to lavish praise on her countrywoman, saying of Ólöf: “She has her own individuality, and the best is yet to come” – sentiments which have been widely echoed elsewhere. If it?s going to get better than Innundir Skinni, then we can forget ruinous bankers and volcanic ash clouds, for the world will be truly stopped in its tracks. David Sheppard, June 2010

http://www.myspace.com/olofarnalds