A new collection of Secret Garden performances will resume tomorrow, April 29th. Here’s a schedule of what’s in store. If you’re unfamiliar with this ever-changing magical garden, it is a mini-documentary series in which I film bands performing a few songs outside the context of a regular show. Along with the schedule you’ll also find some “candid band photos” that, as a tradition of my own, I take after each shoot.
If you’re a blogger who’d like to write a preview for any of these episodes before they release, just email me at hoovesontheturf [at] gmail [dot] com
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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.
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Download “Worry till Spring” and “The Drive“
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