Svavar Knútur – Grend, Essen; September 9th, 2023

Svavar had been touring for a while and even played in my area twice before I managed to go and actually see him. It was a nice venue, if really warm and the setlist was everything I could have asked for. If there was one gig to see it must have been this one. I had a fantastic evening.

I got to Essen early and spent some time in the garden of Grend, having cold drinks. Svavar sat one table over, working, so I said hello and left him alone. After a while, he asked if I wanted to hear a new song. Of course I did, so I joined him and he played me a few tracks from the upcoming Ward Knútur Townes album. It was really lovely. <3

Eventually he had to go for soundcheck and I stayed until it was time for the doors to open. Scored a table at the front, got myself a glass of wine and waited. A few concert fiends joined me after a while and soon the place filled up. The room was too warm, thanks to the unusually high temperatures outside, but otherwise everything was great and we chatted until Svavar stepped on stage.

He asked who had not seen him before and told people that if he seemed strange they should not leave, because they’d get used to it, concluding that it was Stockholm syndrome. 😀 Already I was laughing. He introduced the first song as one that used to be a Hungarian opera, but became an Icelandic pop song, that was the anthem of his mom’s village until it turned into an anthem for Icelandic football hooligans. His description of what they are like was hilarious and turned into explaining what Icelandic crime novels get wrong. 😀 In an attempt to reclaim the song, he played it for us – it’s called ‘Ég er kominn heim’ and was beautiful.

Then he wanted to play a song for his grandmother and mentioned how the album he recorded for her gained him a new audience. Then he played ‘Draumalandi’ – I don’t think I’d ever heard that live before. Afterwards we learned a little bit about chords that sound very Icelandic. Then he spoke about his youngest child, Refur, who was born during Covid and how he loved being stuck at home with his family. He played ‘Refur’, the lullaby he wrote for him.

‘Clementine’ was next, a song that had not yet been played on this tour, but before he thanked us for listening to the Icelandic songs. He mentioned how every language contains the cultural memories of its country and how these memories get lost when a language dies. I love how he sings in both languages. It creates a special magic.

We learned that he told his children the world used to be black and white before people were eating broccoli, because that gives us our color apparently. 😀 How we got from there to breakup songs, I have no idea, but I loved it and loved hearing ‘Hard Things’. Svavar joked about all the words he has learned in German, especially “FAHRRADSTRASSE” – it turned into a really funny story and lead to examples of German versus Icelandic love songs and how we express ourselves. 😀 He played ‘Ölduslóð’ next, then told us a joke about a Finnish and an Icelandic drinking buddy. 😀

The first set ended with ‘The glorious Catastrophe’ and a nice sing-along, before  we got a break that I used to buy Svavar’s new T-Shirt. 😀 We chatted until he was back.

Svavar told us about the album he recorded with Lucy Ward and Andrew Townes  and introduced one of the new songs to us with a story about Icelandic merman and their laughter, which led to talking about “Schadenfreude”. ‘Isn’t it funny?’ sounds very blue, it’s really nice.

As mentioned before that night, he spoke about breakups being lessons and played us ‘Emotional Anorexic’. I always love hearing that song. After that he told us how he reacts to new music that he is going to love by first rejecting it and then only falling for it by listening again, like Sinead O’Connor. Since he did not want to play ‘Nothing compares 2 U’, he decided to dedicated Cindy Lauper’s ‘True Colors’ to Sinead. It was wonderful.

The next section was one of winter songs, because summer is too hot in Germany and too cold in Iceland. The first winter song was ‘Vetrarsól’ – I hadn’t heard that one in a while and was happy to have it in the set. Of course the combination of ‘November’ and ‘Janúar’ followed. Svavar likes it when the sun goes down again and candles matter. It was very funny to hear about the arrival of the fall storms when everything is flying around. November may not be my favorite month, but I love the song. <3 Between songs we heard a funny story about driving to a festival through a horrible storm and being blown off the road.

Svavar mentioned that he thinks of love as a boring subject, since everyone write about it, so he has only written one and a half of them. The one he deemed appropriate for the heat of the day was ‘While the World burns’ – always great to hear. The set ended with talking about loving to tour, but missing his children so he dedicated the last song to them. It was the brilliant ‘The Hurting’.

We loudly demanded a “Zugabe” and he finally picked up the ukulele to play ‘Soundtracks’, a song for his daughters. It’s a sweet one. He then talked about the records his parents had and how he was brought up on Abba and the Muppet album. From the latter he played ‘Halfway down the stairs’. 🙂 Of course he had to give us an Abba song too: ‘When all is said and done’. I love his tale on the song. <3

To my surprise we got one more, because Svavar wanted to sing something in German. I wondered what it would be when he said he had not sung it for a couple of years, but would have never expected a cover of Falco’s ‘Rock me Amadeus’. It was fantastic! 😀

Afterwards there was nothing to do but remain stunned for a bit, then gather our sings and say goodbye. It had been a great night.

Setlist

Ég er kominn heim
Draumalandi
Refur
Clementine
Hard Things
Ölduslóð
The glorious Catastrophe

Isn’t it funny?
Emotional Anorexic
True Colors
Vetrarsól
November
Janúar
While the World burns
The Hurting

Soundtracks
Halfway down the stairs
When all is said and done
Rock me Amadeus