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biography / portrait

Arriving in a blizzard of pop-punk guitars via a dense thicket of shouty-sung vocals, comes the Sound of Young Hafnarfjordur. Yes, seventeen and fucked off feels much the same wherever you are, Iceland, Isle of Dogs or Idaho. (Jakobinarina are from the former). It has, however, been a long, long while since anyone has captured the sheer thwarted energy of being a mannish boy with the vim, vigour and sheer gusto of the six boys comprising this combustible young outfit. Formed out of the classroom when they were just 14, Jakobinarina come from the ashes of the straight ahead punk band Lufthansa, which comprised half of Jako’s line-up - guitarist and main songwriter, Hallberg Hallbergsson, drummer Sigurdur Sívertsen and vocalist Gunnar Bergmann. Proud owners of a guitar and drumkit, both of which were confirmation presents, the seeds of Jakobinarina were sown. “We played a few shows and got Ágúst Ásgeirsson in so I could use his guitar, which was better than mine,” says Hallberg. So Agust - who can play super-mean guitar himself - got switched to keyboards. Friend and neighbour - and crucially sole owner of a car – Björgvin Pétursson got invited in to learn Sigurdur’s bass in time for a Battle of the Bands competition in two months time. “We had no name, but we’d played a show at school and I had written a story about a girl in our class called Jakobina, so it kind of came from that,” says Hallberg. The band entered the competition with a grand total of two songs to their name - ‘I’ve Got A Date With My Television’ and ‘I’m A Villain’, both now highlights of their debut album – and won their heat. Another song and few weeks later they won the whole competition, which was kind of lucky for us, because the band had only been playing for their own amusement and had been planning to chuck in the towel at the end of it all. After that the inexorable rise in the miniscule Icelandic music scene took them to the giddy surroundings of Reykjavik 101 and an instore at local hub, the Smekkleysa record store. For this they had to draft in older brother of a friend, Heimir Valdimarsson to play keys for the absent Ágúst, who probably had handball practise or something that day. When Heimir’s other group quit a month later, he was overwhelmed to be asked to join Jako full time as second guitarist, telling them that he knew they would walk the Battle of the Bands and were without question the best new band in Iceland (this turned out to be an opinion that would be echoed by many of the country’s best known exports, including Sigur Ros and Múm, despite the fact that was little or no musical connection between the generationally divided artists. Heimir turned out to live in the same building as Sigudur, who lived in the same street as Hallberg and Bjorgvin, who lived three streets away from Gunnar and Ágúst. In this sense Jakobinarina are a band in a truly old fashioned sense. With Heimir in place Jakobinarina songs increased in pace to about twice the speed. “I didn’t notice it at first, but as we went through the songs, it all just got a lot faster,” says Hallberg. They wrote the awesome riffs to ‘Power To The Lonely’ and ‘Nice Guys Don’t Play Good Music’ together, and then started writing separately, finding that the parts would then fit together perfectly. In the two years since getting their confirmation presents, the band had gone from “knowing shit” to being pretty much awesomely accomplished players. “We didn’t have anything to do in Hafnarfjördur, so we practised for about three hours every day.” says Hallberg. The summer after the competition they played “hundreds of shows” in downtown Reykjavik, culminating in a performance at Grand Rokk during the international Airwaves festival that made them local heroes and brought them to the attention of Rolling Stone magazine in America. "My Airwaves highlight came on opening night, from a band that had school the next day…Consider Jakobínarína an advertisement for the future," wrote legendary punk journalist David Fricke. This was news to the band still writing goofball songs to make the long winter nights pass quicker. “Almost every song we wrote we laughed at in the beginning, playing something stupid to make ourselves crack up, but somewhere along the way, these dumb creations became cool,” says Hallberg, at a loss to explain the chemistry. After Rolling Stone it was a short imaginative leap to South-by-South West festival in Austin, where the band played four shows in two days, had the time of their young lives and first discovered the high-flown joys of pulling their pants down for the camera. In Texas the band were exposed to a wider range of the international record industry and were picked up by Rough Trade, who in the summer of 2006 released the first Jakobinarina EP, ‘His Lyrics Are Disastrous’, recorded with Sigur Ros producer Ken Thomas. Dates in Britain followed, with Jako touring with Love Is All and Brian Johnstown Massacre. Here it became clear just how divisive Jakobinarina’s sound would become. People either get them or they don’t; their coruscating electric guitars and paint-stripping vocal attack either seeming like a blast of clear teenage energy or too, too much in a scene that tends towards the sensitive and musically whimsical. In the Jako=good camp some pretty impressive names lent their support to the young Icelanders, including such unobvious dance allies as the Klaxons and Simian Mobile Disco, and in the States alternative heroes Islands (ex-Unicorns). For Jako this is perfect synergy, since despite hating almost everything else going on indie-wise, they love these bands. “I don’t think there is anyone like us,” says Hallberg with understatement and a high degree of accuracy. After another triumphant Airwaves show, this time at the festival’s biggest venue, the band were hungrily picked up by Regal/Parlophone early in 2007, and recorded their debut album. ‘The First Crusade’, with producer Stan Kybert and engineer Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys). “I think the album should be used as a reference work for how great albums can be,” says Hallberg without irony. “ I love it and am very, very proud of it, but I wouldn’t want a billion people to listen to it. I just want it to be our music made by us for us.” It might be a little too late for that, I’m afraid, boys... Jakobinarina are: Ágúst Fannar Ásgeirsson [Keyboard] Björgvin Ingi Pétursson [Bass] Gunnar Bergmann [Vocals] Hallberg Dadi Hallbergsson [Guitar and back vocals] Heimir Gestur Valdimarsson [Guitar] Sigurdur Möller Sívertsen [Drums (source: www.jacobinarina.com)