Jakobinarina
Hallberg Hallbergsson (guitar and vocals), Sigurdur Sivertsen (drums) and vocalist Gunnar Bergmann played in the punk band Lufthansa together at the age of fourteen. In school, they met Agust Fannar Asgeirsson, Bjorgvin Ingi Petursson and Heimir Gestur Valdimarsson (who would play keyboards, guitar and more guitar respectively), and formed Jakobinarina.
Rough Trade picked up on the Icelandic teenagers at the 2006 South By Southwest music conference in Texas, and were instantly smitten, releasing their debut EP ‘His Lyrics Are Disastrous’ (produced by Ken Thomas, who’s also worked with Sigur Ros) in the UK, where the band would embark on tours with Love Is All and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. One such tour would include a now legendary set at Rockfeedback’s own Basement Club, where attendees either completely got what they were trying to do, thought they were some kind of joke, or got bafflingly offended by Gunnar’s marching about and quite literally in your face dance moves. The likes of the Klaxons, Simian Mobile Disco and Islands however sided with us – there was something splendid about this lot.
Parlophone signed Jakobinarina for an album, ‘The First Crusade’, recorded with Mike Crossey, renowned for his work with the Arctic Monkeys. Gunnar, in a characteristically self empowered moment, simply says of it that it “should be used as a reference work for how great albums can be.”
MYSPACE.COM/JAKOBINARINA: Take 15 minutes out and stream four of the best guitar pop tunes you’ll hear all year.
JAKOBINARINA.COM: Jakobinarina’s official site includes a guide on how to pronounce their name for us stupid uncultured English types, and a video of the boys playing football, or ‘soccer!’ as David Beckham now likes to call it, entitled ‘The Real Reason Iceland Don’t Qualify’.
BASEMENT CLUB EXHIBITION: Sol Archer’s fantastic camerawork captured the frenetic energy of Jakobinarina live perfectly.
’JESUS’ VIDEO: Sometimes, when you’re this good live, a video of you playing live suffices perfectly.
’THIS IS AN ADVERTISEMENT’: ‘We would even change our name to The Coca Cola band just to get our pockets filled’ currently sits atop our ever changing hierarchical list of fantastic ironic lyrics of ’07.
ROCKFEDBACK BASEMENT CLUB #37: Front row coverage of one of the most brilliantly divisive sets of recent times. You can tell which side of the debate we’re on.
THE GREAT ESCAPE 2007: Now fully ‘getting it’, we popped it to see how the band were going down at this year’s Great Escape festival. Pretty well, it transpired.
THIS IS AN ADVERTISEMENT:
HIS LYRICS ARE DISASTROUS (LIVE):