ÁSGEIR – AFTERGLOW

My iTunes lists this album as “alternative” so someone is trying to tell us this is disquieting music that doesn’t fit easily any category. It’s bravely many steps away from the Icelandic singer/songwriter’s sumptuous debut In The Silence four years ago. That had the lyrical assistance of John Grant; its elegant and elegiac single Going Home a devastatingly haunting piece of music. Afterglow is the artist in experimental mode, not crowd-pleasing form. With an abstract, harsh and chilly Reykjavik air to it, Ásgeir’s sophomore album is like hearing a sodden and sullen Adele swallowed by a geyser after getting neutered. The hipster alternative crowd might dig this, but we fear this difficult record will only deliver afterburn.