Iceland Airwaves: A different kind of festival

Rock Music Menu has just returned from another road trip in search of exciting new musical experiences to share with readers.  This time travels took me to Reykjavík for Iceland Airwaves, a five day music event that takes place each fall, and one that single-handedly provides the reason for the very existence of destination music festivals.

Started as a single event in an airplane hangar in 1999, Airwaves has become one of the most respected and important festivals on the rock music scene.  This year, it drew thousands of fans from far and wide to see some 250 bands from the United States, Europe and of course Iceland, where it seems as if everyone who lives there is in some sort of musical outfit.

What makes Airwaves different from, say, a Lollapalooza, Sasquatch! or Coachella is you get the opportunity to see just as much music - if not more, but in a decidedly more intimate setting.  Any one of those multi-day events can top out with crowds of 100,000 per day, but Reykjavík itself is home to a population that is just about 200,000 with an additional few thousand or so traveling from out of the country for Airwaves, leaving the total amount of attendees at around 6,000.

Then there is the weather; most of the stateside events take place in the summer swelter, causing boozy brains to fight dehydration, clothing and the stink of the dude who decided to go through Bonnaroo without washing for a few days.  Airwaves is tailor-made for the indie-rock fans-of-fall set, those who want to dress up in layers, mill about the historic streets and pop in and out of venues at will.  This year, the temperatures hovered around 40 degrees, and while it got blustery and rainy at times, it would never last for a period past an hour or so.

A crowd surfer at Reykjavík Art Museum

Headliners were spread across ten main venues, where capacity can be anywhere from 100 to 900 people.  The settings tend to be unique; a church, art museum and historical theater all played host this year.  Then there are a dozen or so "off-venues," places where smaller artists play in a spot which can range from a pub to a trendy club to a quiet hostel.

Unlike any festival I've ever been to, where you plan out nearly every waking moment according to the schedule, it's completely futile to do it at Airwaves.  You can try - I definitely did, but then you start meeting people; locals, fellow travelers, artists on off-days, and everyone is in such an excited mood about the experience that it's easy to get swept away by new friendships or hot tips on an act where there may not be a long line waiting to get in.

Musically, the highlights came one after another.  It kicked off slowly Wednesday night with local indie-folk act Of Monsters and Men taking the reigns.  The six-piece were the talk of the festival, playing three high-profile shows and scores of smaller acoustic shows.  Locally, Philly’s 104.5 started to play the song "Little Talks" weeks ago, and the group is garnering positive comparisons to the likes of Arcade Fire, Mumford and Sons and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

Thursday night, Beach House, a dream pop act out of Baltimore, was captivating at a full and dimly lit Reykjavík Art Museum, which is set up like a half-sized Electric Factory.  Playing concurrently was Active Child, aka Los Angeles singer-songwriter Pat Grossi, who had filled up the nearby NASA with those curious to see him on harp, which he uses to create a haunting and chilly sound.

Yoko Ono

Late night saw Yoko Ono bring a configuration of the Plastic Ono Band to Harpa that included son Sean Lennon.  It also brought the police who came to shut down the show after she ran over curfew.  There's no confirmation to the rumors that locals cheered in unison when that went down.

Early Friday evening at Kex, a hostel which also plays host to a large bar and restaurant, John Grant played to a packed house  looking to catch a glimpse of the singer-songwriter, a Denver native now living in Sweden, who was performing as the final act the following night at Harpa. 

Following Grant's brief set, many moved onto the bigger shows, but missed an inspired set by New Jersey's own Caged Animals, who were on their third and final show of the festival.  Dressed in all white and now making its home in Brooklyn, NY, the quintet jittered through a set that only grew in intensity with each song.  Prediction: this band is going to be making some waves on these shores soon enough.

Sinéad O'Connor

But few could top Sinéad O'Connor, who delivered a spirited set in a Lutheran church called Frikirkjan.  Rocking a military buzz cut and doing a primarily acoustic show, the oft-maligned Irish voice gave such a powerful performance that it's easy to envision a major comeback next year when her new album is slated to come out. 

O'Connor was focused, funny and emotive in ways that seemed to come effortlessly.  She had such a commanding presence that the rapturous audience was respectfully silent but let out furious rounds of applause at the end of each song, something that left the bespectacled singer turning and bowing her head down bashfully with great frequency.

Saturday at Iceland Airwaves begins with what has quickly become a tradition, The Blue Lagoon Chill, commonly referred to as “The Hangover Party.”  Hundreds descended upon the world famous geothermal spa 40 minutes outside of Reykjavík, filling it by noon and taking in the spinning by local DJ Margeir and witnessing live performances by Daníel Ágúst of GusGus and the disco electro of Human Woman. 

It was surreal, with snowcapped mountains surrounding in the distance, a bar you can swim up to in the middle of the Blue Lagoon, an abundance of white silica mud to make facemasks that left silky smooth skin and a girl in a one-piece bathing suit double hula-hooping to the music.  Oh, and the hoops were on fire.  All of that before the Saturday shows officially kicked in made for a pretty solid appetizer in anticipation of the last full-night craziness. 

Bathed in bleak but danceable as heck was Austra, a band out of Canada that has been touted as being one of the best new acts of the year.  No disagreements here.  James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem fame retired his band earlier this year, but his DJ set at Faktory proved that he is still a major draw.  A line stretched around the block, and once you got into the venue, there was an additional wait to get upstairs into his set.

The night ended with yours truly donning a Ronald Reagan mask in honor of the 25th anniversary of the Reykjavík Summit and leading the full house at Dillon Rock Bar through standards by AC/DC, Rage Against the Machine and Nirvana.

It was complete madness I tell you.

Iceland Airwaves wound down on a quiet Sunday, there were a few more acts bouncing around a town that was beginning to thin out as foreigners sleepily made their way back to the airport to catch flights.  The country’s most famous musical export, Björk, closed things out at the stunning, just opened venue Harpa Silfurberg, promoting her new record Biophilia.

Rock Music Menu stuck around for several days afterward, absorbing a local music culture teeming with vibrancy even when a festival isn’t going on.  It’s sufficed to say that the scene there is like few others, in that it’s sustainable because the artists are so supportive of one another.  Nightly you can go to see an act playing with someone from another outfit joining them for a song or two before heading elsewhere.

Look for Iceland to be a force in the coming years, and in no small part will it be due to the continuing praise that Airwaves is receiving and unabashed love that the country has for music.

Article first appeared in the October 27 Rock Music Menu in The Daily Times