amiina @ The Triple Door

We don't know if amiina [myspace] means something in Icelandic. We shook Wikipedia, but it wouldn't say. Before last night, we'd never heard amiina before. They turn out to be a string quartet of ex-music school students (María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, Hildur Ársælsdóttir, Edda Rún Ólafsdóttir, Sólrún Sumarliðadóttir) who are known for touring with that other Icelandic band and for playing an astounding assortment of instruments: we saw a synthesizer, digital piano, guitars (electric and acoustic), harp, harmonium, glockenspiel, cello, viola, violin, mandolin, zither, bells, saws, and water glasses. And two laptops. They play that kind of Icelando-experipop that's sweeping the nation, and manage to make song structure visual -- picking up instruments, sampling, moving on to others, all during a single song. One song reminded us if whales got into pop a bit more, you know, more hooky but still mournful and mysterious, like those dark Icelandic nights on the tundra or what-have-you, fjords maybe. Songs featuring percussion tended to be more lively, and the song with two of them on office desk bells (they looked cuter than our stainless steel "Ring the Desk" variety) was a virtuoso feat of belling. When they played water glasses, it again summoned up an oceanic mood, but crossed with the peculiar feeling that we were watching some kind of Icelandic Gong Show variant. They'd win, naturally. Their new album is called Kurr. Again, who knows why. Icelanders are an inscrutable bunch. Worse than Norwegians.

Peter and the Wolf [myspace], by contrast, played an unremarkable 30-minute set which out of sheer cussedness we will nonetheless remark upon. Peter and the Wolf sounds a bit grander than what we were faced with, guitarist Red Hunter (the droning homemade instrument pictured aside) and his friend Emma (singing occasional "ohhh" backup). Hunter is both a proficient picker and a strummer, and he's got a rumbly baritone that for some reason -- they're his songs, after all -- he strains into a higher register. His songs seemed to revolve around women, kinds of portraits, and his lyrics mix in the offhand, conversational run-on with a more heightened, poetic patois. He played a song about Miss Caroline, who (we understand) throws the kind of parties he's not invited to -- it's in a waltz time, and reminded us of Leonard Cohen's growly "Take This Waltz" but then shifted in tone to become more satirical, a Randy Newman take. We're beginning to think that in the South, when you want to point out someone's upscale pretensions, you break out the waltz. It must be just devastating. (Here's the Pitchfork review and their mp3 link to Safe Travels.)