It’s a freezing cold Thursday night
in Reykjavík and I’m suddenly alerted to the fact that Sindri Eldon is playing
at Húrra in just over an hour’s time. I have to make a decision quickly but to
be honest there was never any doubt about whether I would be heading out into
the bitter Icelandic wind to see this guy. It’s the only no-brainer of the week.
I first stumbled upon him quite by
accident during Iceland Airwaves in 2013 when I was walking past The English
Pub on Austurstræti one afternoon and heard an unbelievable racket coming from
inside the bar as you do all over town during the five days of that utterly
fantastic music festival. It sounded too good to ignore so I stepped in off the
street to find a three-piece band on stage at one end of the room powering
through what could only described as super-tight power-pop distorted as far as
it would go and cranked all the way up to eleven on a little Mesa Boogie combo
until it became 90s garage rock of the highest calibre. With a Gibson Explorer slung
around his neck Sindri Eldon certainly looked the part of the consummate
rock’n’roll machine and after his all too short set I realised that this guy
had the songs as well. Boy, did he have the songs.
I tracked him down again the next
night upstairs at the noir-cool Dillon Whiskey Bar where he aborted his gig
half-way through after being unable to keep his guitar in tune, probably
due of a dubious restringing. Not to be put off I saw him again a couple of
days later at another off-venue gig at Lucky Records where he really made up
for it and played his heart out. His songs are very honest and he likes to wear
his heart on his sleeve when it comes to his stories of failed relationships,
battles with the opposite sex and his struggles to get on with people in
general. ‘Bitter and Resentful’, ‘Lovers’, ‘Irma (The Game)’, ‘In Hindsight…’ and
the quite remarkable ‘The Mistake’ (which isn’t on the album for reasons I will
never understand) are all fine examples of this amplified rawness. It sounds to
me as though he’s had something of a tough time getting to where he is today
and I can easily imagine that there were plenty of people who wanted to see him
fail before he had even begun.
In a tiny town such as this one
growing up with the most famous mother in Icelandic music history must have
been something of a mixed blessing. On the flip side of that though is the fact
that he had undoubtedly inherited her and his father’s musical genius. The guy
was literally born to write songs. His back-catalogue of half a dozen demos is testament
to that. There are fantastic tracks that didn’t make it onto his debut album
and on any given night watching him live you will miss out on at least half of the
great songs he’s written. There’s too many to play in one set.
During Iceland Airwaves in 2014 I got
to see him two nights in a row, first at Húrra and then again the next night at
Gamla Bío. Both performances were fantastic and I began to realise that not
only is he a seriously talented musician but the two guys he has chosen as his
rhythm section are every bit as gifted as he is. Last night only reinforced my
opinion that Ásmundur on the drums and Friðrik Sigurbjörn on bass guitar (collectively
known as ‘The Ways’) are a massive part of the band’s unrelenting energy and
flawless execution. I was with a bass player from the US at Húrra this time around
and he agreed whole heartedly that they were both quite outstanding. They are a
tight, highly-polished outfit who deserve much greater exposure than they’re
ever going to get in Reykjavík. Sad but true. His classy debut album, ‘Bitter
and Resentful’ is out now through Smekkleysa (Bad Taste Records) and can be
downloaded at http://www.icelandicmusic.com/Music/Album/1333928/sindri_eldon/bitter_og_resentful/
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