Seabear's debut LP, released in 2007.
This album doesn't blurt it out: There is no loud ›Ta-Dah!‹, no exclamation mark. »The Ghost That Carried Us Away« flatters in a rather unobtrusive way. However, it has encircled you after the third song at the latest. Fragile hymns of nonchalant casualness, created by the 24-year-old Sindri Már Sigfússon. Guitars, piano, his almost bashful and yet so present voice. Nature, mortality, love, these are the topics of his debut album. Even the one who listens only briefly, is able to make them out within the sounds. »Do you remember how the things look when you were young.«
Reykjavik again. Iceland, the musical heartland. On top of that, there is a violinist with her voice in the clouds: Gudbjörg Hlin Gudmundsdóttir (violine, vocals, harmonica). There further are musicians Sindri shared his hometown and his passion: Orn (guitar, lapsteel) who forms together with Sindri and Gudbjörg the inner triangle of Seabear. Or Eiki, Orvar, Gudni and Dóri. One plays the flugelhorn, the slide-guitar or upright-bass. One belong to the live line-up of Sigur Rós (Eiki). Another is part of the sensational múm (Orvar). Some are stage members of Benni Hemm Hemm's Band – the other Icelandic artist on Morr Music. Sindri Már Sigfusson has invited them into his small studio, placed them in front of the only microphone, let them think about his musical thoughts. He likes the notion and the feeling of LoFi, Sindri says. Only for the recording of the drums three microphones were used. The result is reminiscent of the reduced stereo recordings of the 1960ies.
Libraries is the most direct promise that pop music is able to make. Tiny and gigantic, unobtrusive and exciting at the same time. A song like a blink into the most beautiful sunrise. A tumbling piano, swinging drums. Melodies, melancholy: »My little bird flew away from me.« Or »Hands Remember«, the singing being close to one's ear. The voice of an old friend, a murmur, two violins. There is later »Summer Bird Diamond», birds twitter to the accords of an old banjo, a glockenspiel. It is almost a radio play, chamber folk. And »Seashell» at last, a pocket symphony, arranged around jumping drums. Sufjan Stevens would have done it in a very similar way.
