The music of Icelandic duo Orri Jónsson and Kári
Pétursson exists at some vague midpoint between
accident and artifice, making its presence gently felt
through a mixture of naïve charm and careful
calculation. With this being their third album in 10
years, they're hardly the most prolific of artists,
and there's an unmistakable air of mystery about them
that their sonic playfulness is unable to dispel. At
one level it's your basic, lo-fi torch 'n' twang, a
muddy mélange of reverb guitar, vintage electronica
and found sounds — skewed Americana and underground
rock as interpreted, slothfully, by outsiders. But
Slowblow have got this knack of throwing some
unexpected moves into the mix, so, for instance, just
when you think you've got "Very Slow Bossanova" sussed
as a clunky bit of off-kilter eccentricity, it's
transformed into a beautiful melodic refrain. They
also confidently tread that narrow middle ground boldly
occupied by Tom Waits, between frazzled, urbanized
Western folk and the dark carnival noises of what
neo-cons would refer to as Old Europe.
Alongside the ramshackle sounds of old skeleton bones
being rattled are moments of exquisite fragility, with
the addition of ghostly, childlike vocals from Kristín
Anna Valtysdóttir, singer with the Icelandic band Múm.
"I Know You Can Smile" and "Within Tolerance" unfold
with an inexorable sense of melancholia but are lent
an unpredictable edge with crackly, squally
interruptions as they skate over uneven surfaces. The
distant sound of fireworks accompanying the blissfully
soporific "Cardboard Box" is a piece of audio-verité
that heightens the song's sense of intimacy, as if
it's gradually attempting to retreat into itself, away
from the world outside. "Hamburger Cemetary" (sic)
begins as a fuzzy voiceover backed with Mexican guitar
but turns into an unexpectedly poignant instrumental,
complete with dramatic strings. Plenty of such
vivid moments crop up over the album's
duration, jostling for space amid field recordings and
all manner of sonic detritus. The overall impression
is of a kind of eerie, mutant Dust Bowl music.
Slowblow's sound has its familiar touchstones — a bit
of lo-fi Neil Young and Sparklehorse, an echo of The
Walkabouts and Galaxie 500 — and its supposed
randomness doesn't completely ring true, but allowing
for an element of contrivance and some familiar ground
being trodden on, it still makes for a pretty unique
listening experience.
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