Eivør
She joined avant-jazz group Yggdrasil in her early 20s and has since dabbled with folk, tribal rhythms, trip hop, chamber pop and throat singing. A native Faroese artist, she’s collaborated with Wardruna’s Einar Selvik and her otherworldly vocals can be heard in the opening credits of historical drama The Last Kingdom. So we have to ask: how prog is Eivør Pálsdóttir?
Words: Rob Hughes
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ink Floyd at Pompeii. Jean-Michel Jarre at the Giza Plateau. Sigur Rós in an abandoned Icelandic herring factory. Prog has always enjoyed a flair for the dramatic, or at least the downright bizarre, when it comes to live shows. The latest artist to tackle an unexpected venue is singer-songwriter Eivør, who chose to play beneath a tall cliff in a sea-tossed corner of her native Faroe Islands in August 2020.
The site in question – Tinghella, a Viking gathering ground from the Middle Ages – is no easy reach. In fact, Eivør had to abseil to the makeshift stage. “I have a friend in the Faroe Islands who’s an adventurer,” she explains. “And she had this idea of me doing a concert at this place, down the cliff. Somehow she managed to talk me into it. I was terrified, but it was fun. We had to get all my gear – speakers, amps, everything – down with a rope. A hundred people came to watch the show and they all abseiled down too. I love crazy stuff like that.”
A taste for adventure has always been part of Eivør Pálsdóttir’s creative life. She was a Faroese TV star at 13, moved to Iceland to study classical singing while still in her teens and ultimately settled in Denmark. The music she made along the way – from traditional folk to trip hop, windswept prog to free jazz – served to echo the restlessness of her physical journey.
The same sense of motion propels Segl, her ninth and latest album. Taking its name from the Faroese for ‘sail’, it’s primarily about the search for direction and purpose, while acknowledging fate’s random habit of blowing the best-laid plans off course.