As I often say it’s strange how things have a way of coming around. I was listening to Rilo Kiley’s brilliant ‘Portions for foxes’ on my playlist, a song which has a repeated line sung by Jenny Lewis, “I’m bad news, bad news, bad news…” then by chance I discover this track from Fríða Dís, for whom the other half is the bad news.
I don’t know much about Fríða Dís Guðmundsdóttir apart from the fact she’s from Iceland and it looks like she’s been drip-feeding tracks from the just-released ‘Lipstick On’ album for a while.
It’s a powerful, driving, retro pop song with dominant guitar and bass lines which almost drown Fríða out at times. It’s catchy and you’ll soon find yourself humming along.
Something else I noticed is that this track contains a contribution from a regular in these pages, none other than Borgarnes’ finest, Soffía Björg. And that set off a thought process from which I concluded that the riff here isn’t too dissimilar from Soffía’s seminal ‘I lie’, the song that brought her to my attention.
And that prompted me to have a quick listen to the rest of the album to see how much variety there is (as there was in the case of Soffía Björg when her first album came out).
There’s plenty, from dream pop to rock, to psych, to experimental and all underpinned by a trademark Icelandic guitar sound which I assume emanates from Fríða herself. One song, ‘Shower Shock’ could be Anna Calvi. And that isn’t praise I hand out easily.
An impressive piece of work all round.
Judging from her social media cover photo, it looks as if Fríða has been discovered by the Webb telescope. I know Iceland is pretty far north, but not that far.
And I have to mention this little story. On her Facebook page there is a lot of text about the track ‘The Key to My Future Heart’ when it was released as a single in September last year. In Icelandic Soffía Björg is referred to as ‘Raddir’ (voices). In the English translation she is ‘Rejected.’
I leave you to sort that one out between you, ladies.
Find Fríða on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fridagudmundsdottir
Twitter: https://twitter.com/fridadisgud
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fridadis/
