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We were so excited to be going back to our favourite city for the very special Iceland Airwaves festival. Not just for the music but for a nice holiday in our favourite place with such nice people, locals and festival goers … so blog posts here are separate or combination multi-gig reviews and holiday travelogues! Iceland Airwaves is a bit different from most music festivals in that multiple venues are used around the city centre and other smaller bars run many ‘off-venue’ performances during the day so you can see lots of acts all day ’til early morning, running between them! Also, a well curated roster of artists gives a huge range of styles, either established and well loved acts or up and coming from Iceland and many different countries.

I had high hopes but was not really blown away by any acts on this first evening. I was looking forward to Kaelan Mikla and they were the most interesting of the night … gothy, synthy, screamy, a bit samey but still good. AYia, I thought were very forgettable. There was a lot of buzz in advance about Orville Peck, the Canadian new country singer with the mysterious fringe mask. Though I liked the few songs I had heard before, I felt his deep baritone singing was a bit forced and artificial, so didn’t enjoy as much as I expected, though still good music. All of these were at the Art Museum, but for light relief later we went ‘Off Venue’ to Hressingarskálinn and caught some nice pop from Konfekt and Tomas Welding before calling it a long and tiring day!

Attended by George & Karen – playlist with multiple relevant videos below!