Vid Og Vid

Ólöf Arnalds plays a gentle brand of folk music that won't strike anyone with a soft spot for Vashti Bunyan or Joanna Newsom as unfamiliar; her songs have an unusual way of freezing out the external world during the few graced minutes in which they're alive. Arnalds is all about subtle moments of breath-taking, stop-you-in-your-tracks beauty, and none of them owes to more than the simple aggregation of voice and guitar. Sometimes it's a lute or something else with strings, but the general pattern remains the same. In “Englar Og Dárar,” Arnalds employs a dexterous finger-picking style made all the more intimate by the close-miked squeak of her hand changing chords; more striking is her voice — a high, round, fleshy coo that sounds both overwhelmed by wonder and weathered by regret. “Klara” makes good use of the lute and finds Arnalds climbing higher in pitch, while the title track makes for a prime singalong lure with a glorious “la la la” refrain. Arnalds has been known to stretch out and experiment (she used to sing in Múm), but Vid Og Vid answers to a kind of delicate loveliness that is in no way provisional — and certainly not… read more »