Great acoustics, high fives and avoiding setlist nightmares

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Árstíðir – Lutherse Kerk, Masstricht; December 15th, 2018    

Maastricht was the first stop on the Netherlands part of Árstíðir’s Christmas tour and brought us to a lovely small church with good reverb that was perfect for the a cappella songs. The concert was part of Fluid Festival, but didn’t draw as many people as I’d hoped it would. hose, who made it there in the early afternoon were in for a treat, musically and otherwise. It was a good show, where especialy the acoustic part in the beginning and the softer songs sounded gorgeous.

In just two days, the guys played four concerts in th Netherlands, one each afternoon and one each evening in different cities. For them, it meant a lot of driving, for me it meant having to decide, because it was impossible to attend all four shows while using public transport. Thus, I settled for three, two on Saturday and one on Sunday. Maastricht was my first stop and because getting there meant changing trains several times, I had an early start, just to make sure to be there on time. Of course everything went unexpectedly smooth and I got there around ten with two hours to kill before the concert.

Walked around the city a bit, arrived at the church before they even opened, but was allowed to wait inside. Said hello to the guys, was offered tea and got to hear the soundcheck. I had a good feeling about this, because from where I stood, the acoustics were perfect. They could have probably played an unplugged concert there. More people arrived, they let us in and I picked a spot on the side, because I wanted to film the show and did not want to be in anyone’s way. There were some pews in a separate compartment so to speak and I was allowed to go in here with my camera. To late I realized that it wasn’t a great idea, because the wooden floor was squeaky and I could not take one step without making a noise. 🙁 Also the speaker on that side was a bit too close so the sound I got was uneven at times. That was  due to my position in the room though. As I’d heard during soundcheck it was well balanced elsewhere.

It all started with someone from the festival announcing the guys, which led everyone in the room to calm down and pay attention. Daníel, Gunnar and Ragnar walked on stage, gathered around a single microphone and started with ‘Shchedryk’. The sound rose higher and higher towards the church ceiling and was bouncing back from there so it felt like being completely surrounded by music. I held my breath for a moment, closed my eyes and listened with all of my being. That is the magic of concerts in churches – the acoustics are always wonderful. <3

Ragnar explained how they had their tenth band anniversary this year and would play us songs from all these years as a band. “Ages ago in our fantasy world…” – I have always loved the lyrics to this song and while there was a time when it didn’t speak to me so much any more it has recently gotten new meaning somehow, as I’ve become reacquainted with it during this tour. I don’t even remember if they’ve played this at the first concert I ever attended, but I’ve heard it any times and I still think it’s beautiful. 🙂 Gunnar told us how they’d been surprised by the success of ‘Með hallandi höfði’ that was never even meant to be played on the radio. It may not have been they introduction to the band they had hoped for, but it certainly is a good example of what they do and how well they master harmony singing. Of course it is only a small sample of their talent, but an important one.

After asking Jean-Samuel and Guillaume to join them on stage, ‘Ljoð í sand’ was introduced with mentioning Iceland’s black beaches and ‘Someone who cares’ followed right after. Both songs have especially beautiful string parts that I enjoy. During ‘Scarborough Fair / Canticle’ I tried to sing along with all three of the guys which is impossible, because the two songs are partly sung at the same time. So I sang parts of each song. 🙂 After ‘Passion’, we hear about how dark Icelandic music often is, even the Christmas songs and a great rendition of  ‘Jólabæn einstæðingsins’ followed. The song was perfect for this setting.

Gunnar joked about how they like to mess with their none-Icelandic speaking audience by making songtitles as complicated as possible and ‘Þar sem enginn fer’ just being one example. I’ve loved the song from the first time I’ve heard it and it has only grown on me since. It has so much power live that I can’t help but smile every time they play it. ‘While this way’, the song I adore most on ‘Nivais’ was next. I love every line and every note and each time I close my eyes while listening to it, the images of the wonderful video appear in front of my eyes. This is truly a masterpiece. <3

To my surprised they did not take a break this time, but gathered around one microphone again for ‘Hátið fer að höndum ein’. Only Jean-Samuel, who had just recently joined the tour, did not sing with them. I always like having Guillaume’s voice in the mix and they all sounded great. Between ‘Mute’ and ‘entangled’ Daníel mentioned how they had lived in the Netherlands for a months in 2016 and drove lots of roads every day when they toured with Anneke van Giersbergen. He then wondered if he said her last name right and then Ragnar gave it a try as well, saying it a bit differently. Nobody corrected either of them so it must have been OK I guess. 😉 Daníel talked a bit more about everything they had enjoyed on that tour and left it to Gunnar to introduce ‘Entangled’. It always makes me nod and smile knowingly. Me and everyone else in the room, because most people seem to have experienced thinking of a loved one and then hearing from them or something similar. With the backstory the song becomes even better. 🙂

‘You again’ followed and afterwards we hear a bit about Toppstöðin and how it gave ‘Hvel’ a bit of an industrial feel. It fits, the old power plant sure has a special atmosphere that can be seen and felt in the video to ‘Things you said’. From the suddenly ending strings in that song the music smoothly transitioned to the first piano notes in ‘Nú gleymist ég’. This song has held a special place in my heart for a long time. The music feels exciting and somehow soothing at the same time, filling my head with many images. <3 When Daníel said they were down to their last sing nobody reacted so he had to prompt us to say “oooooh”. 😀 ‘Shades’ did its magic though and everyone clapped loudly for more. As the guys walked back to the stage they went right past, all except for Jean-Samuel high-fived me. 😀  They did us the favor and played ‘Heyr hymna smiður’ and even added ‘Góða veislu gjöra skal’. That ended the concert on a high note. We tried hard to get them to play one more song, but that was definitely it. 🙂

I stayed to chat for a while, talked with Gunnar about the upcoming tour, said hello to Robbin and spoke to Ragnar and Guillaume about how I’d liked the concert. Went and took a closer look at Daníel’s setlist too. I’d thought about stealing it, but then I saw that he had written “Don’t steal my setlist” on there, so I wanted to take a pictures and see what else was written on there. It read “That will make me very sad. I will have nightmares and it is you to blame.” It made me laugh and kept me from taking it. Joked about it with Daníel though and he said I could have it after the final gig. I wasn’t planning to go there so he offered to send it to me <3 and I suggested bringing it to the Christmas concert in Reykjavik instead. He promised he would. Eventually I said goodbye and made my way to the train station to travel onwards to the second concert of the day….

pictures of this concert

Setlist

Shchedryk (Carol of the bells)
Ages
Með hallandi höfði
Ljoð í sand
Someone who cares
Scarborough Fair / Canticle
Passion
Jólabæn einstæðingsins
Þar sem enginn fer
While this Way
Hátið fer að höndum ein
Mute
Entangled
You again
Things you said
Nú gleymist ég
Shades

Heyr hymna smiður
Góða veislu gjöra skal

Àrstíðir European Christmas tour: Five gigs down, two to go. Next stop: Arnhem

“This show is like a trampoline”

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Svavar Knútur – Zeche Carl, Essen; Decemer 11th, 2018

The week of Icelanders singing Christmas songs had started with Svavar Knútur and it ended with him. He played in Essen for the first time and it was one of his funniest concerts this year (and I’d already seen a few really good ones). He gave us lovely songs, lectures on Icelandic Christmas and all sorts of hilarious stories. It was absolutely everything I could have wanted and even better than I had expected. I’m still laughing just thinking about it.

The show was Svavar’s first time in Essen and he’d been a bit nervous about it beforehand, fearing that nobody would come. He was wrong though, by showtime the venue had filled considerably and during the break he told me there were 70 people. I was at the front and wondered what the show was going to be like.

As he walked on stage, Svavar told us that he had not expected so many people. He started by explaining the differenced between German Weihnachten and Icelandic jól, which is a celebration of the returning of the light and thus has a bigger cast of characters than just Jesus and Mary and Joseph. Apparently it is not so much connected to a Christian tradition, but more a general tradition. The first song, or at least the lyrics to it, were written by his greatgreatgreat (…) grandfather and he looked straight at me when he told us the title to make sure I got it. It’s called ‘Nóttin var su agæt ein’ – the same song we had heard in Düsseldorf as well. Svavar told us how it is supposed to be sung softly, tender and without and ego and then demonstrated how some singers do it wrong.

We learned about Grýla, the mother of the 13 Icelandic Yule lads and a mean troll, who ate her first husband because she got bored with him and lost the second to illness. It was the third one, Leppalúði she had loads of children with and 13 of them are the Yule lads who steal stuff and look into windows or eat all the food. Grýla eats children who cry and the Yule cat they have eats children who don’t get clothes for Christmas. When Svavar spoke about how stupid Grýla’s husband was, he went of a tangent and talked about “reverse natural selection” in Iceland. It was highly amusing. Back to the trolls we learned that their anatomy is different from ours too and they have lots of multiple body parts. it was all funny, but had a serious note too, because all these myths were used to explain why life in Iceland was so hard and people were poor. It was also used to explain death, since the child mortality rate was really high in Iceland not that long ago. After all these dark stories he played ‘Maríu Bæn’ (Prayer to Mary), a dark song found in the belongings on Halldór Laxness and turned into a song.

After such sadness, he promised to bring us back up, like on a trampoline and told us more stories about Christmas in Iceland, for example about Glühwein and how they go about it all wrong. It was hilarious. 😀 We also heard about eating fermented shark on December 23rd, which is like “eating fish made out of wasabi” and how bad it smells. I sure know the smell, one day I might even try it. The 24th is then the day when everything gets cleaned and the families celebrate in the evening. That sounds very much like our Christmas, except for the traditional songs about death, especially to certain people. 😉 Christmas meals are plenty for Christmas, because everyone gets up at night and eats leftovers. It’s also a big tradition to give books for Christmas. That is a nice one to have. 🙂 He then told us about Icelandic Composer Ingibjörg Þorbergs and played her song ‘Hin fyrstu jól’ (His first Christmas) for us. I can only imagine how beautiful it must have been to play the song on the radio with her.

Then Svavar got into his own songs and told us about the importance of Weltschmerz to inspire creation, Waldeinsamkeit to crate and Wanderlust to bring the creations out into the world and collect more Weltschmerz while traveling. This has always made sense to me and I sure like the feeling of collectively sharing some Weltschmerz, especially if it comes along in the form of a song as beautiful as ‘Emotional Anorexic’. <3 I’m not sure I share the feeling of loving mornings. I seem to have turned from a morning person to a night owl over the years, quite the opposite of Svavar. I like his description of those mornings though. He explained to us that the Danish word “hygge” so many seem obsessed about is the exact same as the German “Gemütlichkeit”. Good to know. When it was time for ‘Wanderlust’ he spoke about the limited scale of Icelandic emotions and how different it is from the German “emotional rainbow”. This is not necessarily true for all Icelanders, but the ones I know better are all well traveled. He is spot on about Germans getting angry though. 😉 Somehow he got from there to Martians. :DI really can’t describe how funny it was. Even if I repeated word for word, you probably would not laugh as hard as I did. It all ended with a beautiful sing-along

We got to hear half a song about Gütersloh where he played theater in three different plays he also wrote the music for and how one critic had used just the wrong word to describe him. ‘Lady Winter’ was just the right song to take us to the break. I went and chatted with him for a while, bought his Christmas album and was offered some Christmas cake a friend had baked for him. It was yummy!

When he returned, Svavar brought us the book about the Yule lads he’d already given us to sig in Düsseldorf. He also asked us not to draw penises which some people seem to think is funny. Apparently in Poland they draw asses instead. 😀 Next was ‘Brot’ a song about struggle in all of its forms. Such a great song too! ‘Tiger and Bear’ and ‘Spor’ followed back to back. Then he asked his friend Marie on stage to join him for ‘While the World burns’. Hearing them sing in harmony was beautiful. 🙂 ‘Undir birkitré’ brought another good sing-along and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one in the room who was smiling. A spontaneous and lovely rendition of ABBA’s ‘One of us’ followed, before Svavar unpacked his ukulele and joked about how unstable it was. He spoke about the evolution of ‘Ölduslóð’ through people covering it and using different chords than he does so he updates it.

He announced a new song he never played without having the lyrics in front of him. ‘Haustvindar’ is about autumn winds and mourning a summer that never came and not yet being prepared for the autumn. In the end there is nothing to do but dance with the leaves. He screwed up once, but the song was beautiful nonetheless. I need to listen to ‘Ahoy Side A’ more! The last song in the set was ‘The Hurting’, but before singing it he joked about offering it for a sex shop commercial. 😉 He also needed to tell us about lying and thus creating new mythologies, because science has taken away so many mysteries. I already knew the stories about the Canadians and the Swiss, but the one about the US American TV crew was too funny. I’d sure like to read that Heathen Constitution he mentioned. *giggles*

We cheered so much that he needed to come back for an encore, but I hadn’t expected any less. He promised us one last Yule song telling us some more about the yule lads that scare children and are rude to the adults. On January 6th though, the Icelanders gather by bonfires trying to connect with the hidden people and how they came about. So we got to hear a song for that occasion. It sounded really sad. Last, but not least Svavar played ‘Heims um bol’ (Silent Night) with one verse in German that we all sang along to. It was beautiful and there could not have been a nicer ending to the concert. 🙂

I had a train to catch so there wasn’t much time to chat, but I quickly said goodbye before I left and thanked Svavar for the great concert. I sure liked those Yule shows and would not mind to attend them again.

Setlist

Nóttin var su agæt ein
Maríu Bæn
Hin fyrstu jól
Emotional Anorexic
Morgunn
Wanderlust
Lady Winter

Brot
Tiger and Bear
Spor
While the World Burns
Undir birkitré
One of us (ABBA)
Ölduslóð
Haustvindar
The Hurting

Icelandic Elf Song
Heims um bol