I was thinking only the other day that we hadn’t reviewed an Icelandic artist for ages. I’ve never been able to nail the problem but it appears that international promotion is somewhat lacking there. Perhaps there aren’t enough PR companies for the vast amount of music churned out by a population of less than 400,000. Or perhaps the artists tend to focus mainly on that domestic market.
But hey-ho, here’s one and it’s Brynja (Bjarnadóttir) and she’s paid us a visit twice before, back in 2022, when she was living in the Netherlands.
Now she’s back. I know, it’s the lure of those winds whipping up off the Atlantic, the fermented shark, the boiled sheep’s head and ram’s testicles, washed down with Brennivín. All the things I used to promote when I worked for the Tourist Board. How could she stay away as long as four years?
‘Rainbow’ is a song about overcoming difficulty she says, seeing a rainbow where you only saw the rain before.
That’s quite a graphic description and put me in mind of The Waterboys’ and Mike Scott’s epic ‘The Whole of the Moon’.
It isn’t the same sort of song though. It’s a tad on the dark side, both underscored and punctuated by ominous synthesisers and quivering vocals. Then out of the blue comes a barrage of synth pads being beaten to death. I guess that’s the moment when the rainbow is spotted, shining through the mist?
And it’s followed by an outro in which it sounds like someone is trying to contact us from the other side, or perhaps they are aliens from the Planet Zog trying to send a message to the Earthlings?
It’s yet another example of the fact that you should always expect the unexpected where any Icelandic artist is concerned. (That’s another of my throwaway lines from the tourist days and it still holds true).
The most intriguing thing though is that compositionally and vocally the song channels Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’ in many ways, introducing a trip hop aspect to her pop and R&B background.
Lyrically it’s all soft, warm and clingy as the title suggests but it seems to get a little raunchy midstream with a line about “carrying me off to bed”. Did I hear that right? Someone has a pot of gold waiting at the end of that rainbow.
‘Rainbow’ is one of a string of new releases leading up to her second album ‘Cloud 9’ in March 2027.
There is a video of the song coming soon.
Find her on:
Website: https://www.brynjamusic.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brynjamusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brynjabrynja/
