Icelandic singer-songwriter Ásgeir has today shared new single Youth; a rumination on the artist’s childhood.
The single is the first taste of his forthcoming third album Bury The Moon, which will be released in both English and Icelandic on February 7, 2020.
The new song had it’s global premiere on Good Nights with Bridget Hustwaite on triple j last night, For the new track Ásgeir returns to his Icelandic roots, the song was written in collaboration with his father, admired poet Einar Georg Einarsson. The song documents his childhood growing up in a small Icelandic town, unburdened by worry and full of unbridled joy.
Ásgeir’s debut album soared to success in his native land, before English language edition In The Silence connected with an entirely new audience.
Here in Australia, it was spotlighted as triple j Feature Album and both the album and it’s lead single King and Cross achieved gold ARIA accreditation, the song also scored a place in the Top 10 of the triple j Hottest 100 the following year.
The singer’s new album Bury The Moon – or Sátt, to give the record its Icelandic title – begins with heartbreak and escape. Ásgeir watched a long-term relationship disintegrate, and decided that he needed to get away, to lose himself in the endless Icelandic countryside.
Retreating to a summerhouse – a tiny rural home used by those on the island – he spent the winter writing, just him, his guitar, and those endless reflections on love and loss.
“I took my guitar, a small keyboard, and a very simple recording set up,” the musician recalls. “And that was it.”
Days, weeks went past, with close friends dropping by to hand over food parcels, and words of encouragement.
“I’ve always had this longing to go somewhere on my own,” he says. “I think it was really good to go there and just think about music and have no distractions whatsoever. I went out running in the morning and then I wrote all day”.
Unfurling his new ideas in the studio, he started to gather like-minds, fellow travellers, and guest lyricists to work on his music. Einar Georg Einarsson wrote many of the lyrics for Ásgeir’s extraordinary debut, and this partnership has only strengthened and deepened their father-son relationship.
“I think the lyrical side of the album is, at times, a bit more personal for me now, because my Dad and I did it together. We spent a lot of time together”.
The final record will feature eleven new songs; Pictures, Youth, Breathe, Eventide, Lazy Giants, Overlay, Rattled Snow, Turn Gold To Sand, Living Water , Until Daybreak and Bury The Moon.
American songwriter and Reykjavik resident John Grant assisted on translating the lyrics to English, but like many international artists such as Christine and The Queens, Ásgeir is bring out the album in both his native tongue and an English version.
“I’m looking forward to seeing the reactions, and how it sits with people,” he says. “I wanted to take the project back to its roots, in a way, and make it more about honesty: honest songs with strong melodies and lyrics.” Ásgeir said of the new record.
Take a listen to the new single, Youth.
Source: Media Release
