My obsession with Icelandic music kicked off in October, 2011. We were in Reykjavik for our third Iceland Airwaves music festival and I’d just bought a turntable earlier in the year, so my plan was to see if I could track down some old school Icelandic punk records. Back then there wasn’t much info about that stuff online, and most of what I found was actually listings on eBay. But I showed up in Reykjavik with a list of a dozen or so albums I wanted to find and strolled into Lucky Records. I gave my list to the guy working behind the counter (who I later learned to be Gestur). He looked at it. Looked at me. Looked at it. Looked to me. Then disappeared into the back room without having said anything. A few seconds later he came out with another guy (the one and only Ingvar) who asked, “where did you get this list?” I told him. “Oh, those are my listings.” Obviously I’d come to the right place.
I walked out of Lucky that day with eight records in my bag, little realizing that I’d also made two new friends who I look forward to seeing anytime we’re back in Iceland. One of those records was the only album put out by a band called Jonee Jonee, 1982s Svonatorrek. I eventually wrote about it a couple of years later on the first iteration of Life in the Vinyl Lane in what was one of my shortest posts ever, the crux of which was, “It’s weird. It’s disjointed. It’s odd. Is it post-punk, or new wave, or noise, or art punk, or deranged?”
I was excited to hear the three members of Jonee Jonee got back together and planned to put out a new record in 2023. And what a beauty it is. Annar Dagur has 21 songs, all written between 1981 and 1989, and re-recorded between 2017 and 2020. This includes nine songs that originally appeared on Svonatorrek, which the band described in a Facebook comment as having “failed badly” due to problems with the vinyl cutting, which makes me wonder how much of my earlier impression was due to that as opposed to the music itself. The record comes in a nice gatefold jacket with a full-sized booklet attached to the spine in a numbered edition of 400 copies, and at least some copies include a handmade CDr of the album.
“Hver er Hvað” is the first song from Svonatorrek that makes an appearance on Annar Dagur, and I have to say it sounds great. And not because anything is overproduced – just listening to the vocals it’s obvious we’re getting what the guys really sound without any kind of extensive clean-up. There’s nothing fancy here, just straight forward playing and singing, three musicians hitting record and putting it out there. Just listen to the stripped-down “Gildi”. No one is trying to impress you with the vocals or harmonizing, it’s just raw and real, which makes it one of the more compelling songs on the album. Or the mid-song transitions in “Abstrakt”, with two voices briefly talking over one another and someone shouting in the background – not your normal fare even in the world of early 80s punk rock. And what about “Ég Er Einn Af Þeim”, a simple beat with rap-like vocals on top for a good minute before the bassline kicks in and the voices slowly gain intensity? Everything about the track is unexpected, and yet it all works. “Hávaði” too brings some off-kilter energy, an unexpected song that is almost impossible to categorize. I’m not going to go as far as to call Annar Dagur avant-garde, but there are surprises waiting for you with every new song.
I suspect this one will be hard to find outside of Iceland, so my recommendation is to hit up my friends over at Lucky Records for a copy HERE. You can also find it with some of the other new vinyl retailers in Reykjavik. It’s not cheap, for sure, but with all the attention to detail in the recording and packaging you can justify it.