The seemingly overnight indie sensation played its inaugural show in Denver to a sold out crowd at the on Monday night.
Soft strumming of guitars for the song “Dirty Paws” by singers/guitarists Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar “Raggi” Þórhallsson opened the performance. The song progressed and the rest of the six piece band joined in with their charming Icelandic accents that perfectly melted into the chorus.
From there, the band seamlessly flowed into “From Finner,” a song about a whale that has a house on its back, “… on which people travel across the ocean, exploring different places and having adventures,” according to Þórhallsson. Although the song is a tall tale, the keyboards gave it a passionate depth that made it more than just a song about an adventure at sea.
Next up was a spot-on cover of the Cure’s “Close to Me.” The upbeat “Mountain Sound” and easy, tender “Slow and Steady” provided a beautiful mix of beats and tempos.
The band gracefully rolled through the rest of its new album, “My Head Is An Animal.” The album is a collection of songs that tell stories about famous travelers, love’s unrelenting force and experiences of living in a country isolated from the rest of the world.
And while the crowd swelled with admiration and affection, clearly marked by mob choruses, blissed-out sing-alongs and orchestrated clapping, the band was a little gun-shy from the abundance of attention for most of the night.
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Rachel Chaparro is a Denver-based writer and a new contributor to Reverb.
Nathan Iverson is a Denver photographer and regular contributor to Reverb.
