And therefore let us have good company! Our company! Or solitude, if it must be! [...] We may, at least for a while yet, guard ourselves, my friends, against the two worst contagions that may be reserved for us - against the great nausea at man! against great pity for man!Nietzsche, "Genealogy of morals", Third essay, sec. 15
After a week in utterly solitude, lost between the pages of some books, I went outside of my disorganized room. Alone. Who takes care of me? It is a question asked from a weak heart? Probably. Some people are used to put the reason of their pain in some external things, they put the guilt in somewhere outside of their organs: in God, in their enemies or in their friends. They're wrong. Nobody is responsible of your pain. Nobody. You can control their influence on you creating big walls of indiference. Reducing the voice from outside in a simple loud: a useful drug that converts us in monsters. I need to tell to me: not, the people surrounding you is not the real problem... the real problem is inside you. A reflection that only the strong hearts can pick inside their ventricles. Me, only me. Is quite easy to put the reason of our pain in all that surrounds us but, if we dig a bit, we can find that the real spark of our pain is beneath our skin. And there's a clear temptation when you take away the guilt from the people that are surrounding you, feel pity for them. Trying to avoid the nausea at man, we take away our guilty spark on them and we put the pity. Why? Why I should feel pity for them? The pity is a clear message that goes directly to the impossibility that we, the strongers, feel in the weak people: their impossibility to live from their inside, their impossibility to overcome themselves. It is real, and cruel: the shame is a scathing slipkont that the strongest put in the neck of the weak to avoid their desire to fight. No pity! The pain on them is the way to create new ways of being. It's not cruelty, it's reality! In the spark of beautiness there's always, beneath it, a rotten and painful soil. Dionisos beneath Apollo and, when Apollo is reached, Dionisos another time! Nobody scapes from it, even the stronger!
So trying to keep this in mind I was walking trough Reykjavík to see some concerts in the Airwaves festival. The first was a off-venue concert that I shared with a nice italian man with a big heart inside his chest: Domenico. The concert was from Steindór Andersen, a traditional rímur singer. He only played two songs because I think that he was with a little hangover. The second song catch me but Domenico was right: the sintetizer dramatizes so much the rímur. Bur, anyway, was really beautiful.
After the concert of Steindór and walking alone trough the street I listened some good music inside Hressó, they were Agent Fresco. The concert was quite short but they were so good. A combination of screams, core, smooth melodies and a bit of jazz. They really catch me.
I decided to go to Risið to listen some unknown groups before my meeting with, also unknown for me, Rökkuró. Risið is a pub with a wood bar and soft light with a lot of sofas, tables with candles and solitary chairs. A perfect place to listen some good music. The pub was almost empty and I was the only one drinking beer in the brown wodden bar. The first group, Vigri, were preparing all the instruments and I moved to the bar in the front of the stage. Alone with my beer. That blonde beer that welcomed inside her all the scarlet walls. Me and myself. They started to play. In a few minutes the hair of my body began to bristle. A nice voice from a great guitar, a smooth drummer that knew how to encourage the other instruments, a piano that swing your stomach into the melody and a touch of metal instrument that invites you to enter in a dream world, there in that pub. After the concert of another group I met with them and we were talking a bit. They're pretty new in the icelandic music landscape, they don't have any album for the moment but they're recording in the same studio of Sigur Rós. I really believe in their proposal. Is risky and it step aside from the big shadow of Sigur Rós that influence so much, for my taste, the new groups that try to imitate them. Like, lamentably, Rökkuró. There's the only song that them, Vigri, recorded until now:
Vigri - Sleep from Ragnar Snorrason on Vimeo.
After their great first concert in live (maybe I'm the first fan of Vigri) I went to Tjarnarbíó to listen Rökkuró. In a few words: it was really boring. Sometimes a voice fits perfectly with the melody and the mood but... sometimes not. They're trying to be like a smooth post-rock group but the voice of the main singer fuck it all. She is nice, and have a great voice. But sometimes you need to listen the speech of the guitar, the piano and the bass, and the voice was covering them. It not was like Vigri, that the voice was another instrument more. In Rökkuró all the instruments were playing to serve an to kneel before the female irritating voice. I'm sorry, the don't catch me at all. Only in one moment: when she shut up and played the chello.
After this I decided to return to Risið to find better luck. Sometimes the unknown groups are better than the comercial ones. I read "Bon Iver" in the description of the group that was the next to perform in Risið: Of Monsters and Men. After them was playing a guy with a guitar. Was quite nice. Me, alone with a beer sitting in a table with a candle in front of me. Looking trough the window the long queue waiting for Amiina and Efertklang. I prefered the unknown ways and groups that kept me alone. With my beer and my own fight to avoid the nausea at mankind. When the man with the guitar finished his great performance a girl with a nice hat and haircut went up to the stage. A nice guy with a brilliant eyes was at her side. Different instruments: from the organ to the tambourine and trough the trumpet. They sound like painful country acoustic sound with a spark of hope at the end. Rapidly catch me. All their song managed to draw a smile in my face and a little springs of tears in my face. They, rocking my mind, remind to me all of this trips to the north and to the West that I'm always planning in my mind. They brought me to head the old Jack London and his trips. Far from home. Alone in the middle of Reykjavík. Far from home. And they were singing something about mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters. Far from home. They, definitelly, catch me. Their song "From finner" makes me shake my head and chart and open-mouth smile seconded by my wet eyes: "We're far from home, all alone, but we're so happy". Something so complicated to explain sumarized in a sentence seasoned with an impulsive and sexual voice leading all the innovative porposal of intruments to create a new -his own- style of acoustic-electrical-country. But, with this kind of groups, the words are only a stick in the wheel, only tags than we put on them to hug the unknown. The music should be listened, not talked, so let's go!
Their myspace: http://www.myspace.com/ofmonstersandmenmusic
A really good song of them: Little Talks by Of Monsters & Men
The best song of their concert: From Finner by Of Monsters & Men
When I went out of the pub a big queue was waiting to go inside Listasafn, I turned up the collar of my coat and I smiled looking at them. Unknown and uncrowded ways. I went to Iðnó to finish my night with Seabear, my first contact of the night with the overloaded and crowded concert halls. In the street, walking to Iðnó, the smile that "Of Monsters and men" draw in my face was standing in my face.
The concert of Seabear was quite nice. I'm not able to say anything of them because I was really tired to enjoy their performance. But, sometimes, they catch me. You can see how the singer was an ancient friend, like me, of the white walls and the large corridors with the fluorescent and eternal nights. I think that he overcome his white period whit the music. All of us have method to fight against or with our past. He has his method, and he his very succesful with it. I have, also, my own method. The surprise of the night appear in the stage. Three lucky persons managed to go on the stage with all the musicians to say "bye" in the last song. Klemens shouted at me: Radka!!! Yeah, she was there! With Thimo and Ivonne. It only can happen in Iceland.
A double pylsur marked the epilogue of the night. Another time alone to my home after a good healing music session against nausea at men.
Today, "For a minor reflection". This will be my third time that I see them. I hope that they are going to play more songs of the first album. Like this:
And, searching in the guide of Airwaves, I saw a group that is performing tomorrow: "We made God". Also from Iceland and also post-rock:
