Steinn Kárason

steinn úr djúpinu

Written by: DR on 07/03/2011 21:43:44

The old English idiom of 'Don't judge a book by its cover' is advice we can all heed... however, some albums have covers so befuddling that one can't help but be a little amused by them. Obviously, this album is one of those. It was nominated as the worst artwork of 2010 by Iceland's two biggest newspapers (there's no word on whether it won, though it probably should have), but even just from looking at it, despite it being horrendous, it doesn't seem like something that would be very relevant to this site.

Then you listen to the music and it soon becomes clear that, no, it really isn't relevant to rockfreaks.net, because this is Icelandic pop music. If you can see past that, by all means continue to read because, surprisingly, this isn't completely and utterly awful, permitting you don't approach it with a serious face, for it's rather cheesy. It's not the type of pop music such a label generally implies because it clearly hasn't been tainted by the money-spinning machine that is popular music in America - something that can only ever be a good thing. It's hard pointing towards a specific point of comparison as I'm not exactly schooled in this genre, and each song is pretty unique, but it's inspired by different corners of the globe. I can hear influences from country music in tracks like "thorscafe", the accordion-heavy "Hermadurinn" is reminiscent of folk music and there are vauge nods to Bjork in there, too. The production is another positive: each aspect or instrument sounds crisp and clear, with nothing sounding amateurish and everything being glossy and polished.

Another plus is that Mr. Kárason has some nice ideas in regards to themes (which have been graciously noted in English on the press release). I can't actually admire them whilst listening to the music as I don't know the Icelandic language, and I'll hazard a guess that a chunk of you reading this won't, either. Which brings us back to this album simply not being very relevant for this particular site. Musically there's nothing strikingly wrong with it, the vocals are passable and the production is solid, yet I can't find a reason to recommend this to anyone, least of all you, the reader who has stumbled upon this website and been led to believe it's about rock music. Steinn Kárason, you're appealing to the wrong demographic by sending it to rockfreaks.net for review.

5

Download: "Hermadurinn" is an interesting song, try that.
For The Fans of: Icelandic pop music
Listen: YouTube link

Release Date 2010
Self-Released

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