To celebrate her tour of the UK in Autumn 2013, Arnalds offered this four track EP as a gift to her fans. These tunes were originally given away with the Spanish art magazine Matador.
It will please those who prefer her to sing in her native Icelandic. Personally, her English lyrics are so wild and idiosyncratic that I'm happy to listen to her fragile, wavering voice in either language.
The new single from her sublime album Sudden Elevation (One Little Indian) release on 25th November 2013 is appropriately entitled Call It What You Want.
Her singing is almost operatic without sounding high blown or forced and is thrown into relief on the EP through uncluttered folky, acoustic arrangements composed by Skúli Sverrisson.
The songs (with translations courtesy of Google translate) are, in order, Lát Vaxa (Let Grow); Blóm (Flowers); Hlið (Gateway) and Af Stað (Off Place)
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The last of these is a song written for the Náttúra concert in Reykjavik where she performed on the same stage as Björk and Sigur Rós.
Of this, she says "It describes how untouched and beautiful Iceland is, and how distant it is from the wars and ugliness of the world. My lyric is a plea that Icelandic people do not get drunk on their greed". Three months after it was written, the country was plunged its worst ever financial crisis.
The moral is clear. Listening to Ólöf Arnalds is not only good for the soul but might even help prevent economic catastrophes!
Ólöf Arnalds' website
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