October 2014 (my fifth visit)
Well, it would seem that seeing
Sigur Rós did have quite an effect on me as I thought it might. I
saw them again in July at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark and have tickets to
see them once more in Dublin shortly after I return from this trip to Reykjavík.
There would be no repeat of the
inclement weather that plagued the Airwaves festival this time around. A certain feeling
of peace prevailed as I arrived from Glasgow. My first novel, On A Small Island
is away with my editors for its copy-edit and I feel that it will be ready to
self-publish sometime in the first half of next year (February 4th
as it turned out). This may have something to do with the prevailing sensation
of tranquillity.
I am in the middle of reading
Morrissey's Autobiography and feel that I must finish it while I'm in Reykjavík
even though I don't normally read much while away on holiday. It's just that good.
Sunday 27th: I've finally had my
first brush with stardom in Reykjavík. While shopping at the Kringlan Mall I
see Kjartan Sveinsson (the now ex-keyboard player and multi-instrumentalist
from Sigur Rós) out and about
with his daughter. She is blonde and very cute and they have been shopping at
Bónus together.
The first night of this year's festival has
The Bedroom Community performing in the hallowed Hallgrímskirkja. It is
unusual, beautiful and typifies what Airwaves is all about, the availability of music in any part of the city. Amazing.
On Thursday while walking past The
English Pub on Austurstræti I hear a band playing inside. Upon further inspection it turns out
to be Sindri Eldon and the Ways. They are brilliant and I will strive to see
them again if at all possible. Later I see Valdimar play in the meeting room of
the hotel I'm staying in and then I head to Harpa to see Ólafur Arnalds perform
his new album, ‘For Now I Am Winter’ with the Icelandic Symphony orchestra. It
is simply breath-taking.
I finally see Endless Dark on a big
stage and then wrap the night up with a marathon set from Yo La Tengo. It took
them twenty nine years to get to Iceland but they made it.
The Off-Venue schedule continues to
impress the hell out of me with gigs from Dikta and Singapore Sling.
They have gone out of their way this year to make the festival more inclusive
to the public and there are bands playing everywhere during the daytime.
On Saturday night I see Skepna at
Gaukurinn before Icelandic/British band ‘Fears’ who are even better than I had
expected. So much so that I make the lead singer fight his way back through the crowd to the dressing room to get me a CD after the show. I round off the night with a visit to Iðno to see Dikta on a
big stage for the first time since my first trip to Harpa in 2011. Dikta's
performance is immaculate as always and a lot of fun.
The next day I decided to check out
Sindri Eldon and the Ways one more time at an off-venue performance as I hadn't
quite made up my mind whether he was as good as I originally thought or not. He
definitely has something going on but seems to be very uptight as a person and
possibly drinks way too much. This time round though he was on his best
behaviour as Björk was in the audience at Lucky Records. (I hadn’t figured out
at this point that he is actually her son and that the guitarist from The Sugarcubes is his father. That minor epiphany is still to come). It was
the second time that I have seen her in the flesh, the first being about twenty
years ago in Brisbane when I was working on the Big Day Out tour and she was playing songs from
her album ‘Debut’ just as her career was beginning to really take off.
She is still as petit and
unbelievably cute as I remember and is wearing one of her little Japanese
inspired blue dresses with blue tights and sparkling black shoes with big
heels. After not seeing anyone famous for four trips to Reykjavík I have now
seen two of my favourite Icelandic artists just days apart from each other.
It’s true what they say, it really is a small town.
Since moving here to live I have
also found myself swaying drunkenly and singing along to a Billy Joel song (Piano Man?) at
Dillon in the very wee hours with the drummer from Sigur Rós but that is another story
altogether.
