Moses Hightower // Önnur Mósebók

If it didn't sing in  Icelandic, you could be in the cool soul jazz club of a Manhattan basement. But the delicious gravelly accent of the old Danish gives a slightly teasing air to the nonchalant melodies of the band formed in 2007 by guitarist Daníel Friðrik Böðvarsson, drummer Magnús Trygvason Eliassen, bassist and vocalist Andri Ólafsson, and keyboardist and vocalist Steingrímur Karl Teague.

Their first album Búum til börn (2010), produced by Magnús Øder (who also worked with Benny Crespo's Gang and Lay Low ) displays this laughing lasciviousness by proclaiming "let's make babies"!

Önnur Mósebók (2012), from the same collaboration, propelled the group to the top of the national charts by digging this same furrow; in 2017 Fjallaloft , produced this time by Styrmir Hauksson, is a bit more agitated (but not too much anyway) and even goes as far as get carried away in Radiohead mode with Ýmis mál.

If you can find it anywhere, their cover of Kate Bush 's Wuthering Heights is worth the detour, slowed down to the extreme, like a very, very, very leisurely fall into a basin of cotton.

As you will have understood, Moses Hightower is not punk.