Meet Iceland's Sprengjuhöllin
Reykjavik’s five-piece, Sprengjuhöllin, is one of the bands I missed in Austin and caught the following week in New York. They sang a few songs for the Secret Garden in the afternoon, and in the evening I headed to their show at Fontana’s (according to them, quite a few people in the audience were Icelandic). Snorri Helgason is a soft-spoken front man who lets his more boisterous band mates do the talking. Bergur Ebbi Benediktsson likes to do accents, and he does it well, and he teamed up with keyboardist Atli Bollason to ask what in the world emo was about, since Americans have the best cars and the most young, good-looking girls. That room in Fontana’s is terrible for louder songs, of course, though that didn’t stand the band from being high in spirits; but it was when softer songs like “Worry till Spring” came on that they easily owned the room. It looks like they’ve only recently started singing in English, in preparation for a North American release.
Download “Worry till Spring” and “The Drive“
Website: Sprengjuhollin
