»When it comes to colour, however, I have to beat my chest: it is blue,« said Gottfried Benn in his lecture »Problems of Poetry« at the University of Marburg in 1951. And what about all the other colours? »Pure word clichés,« said the poet. When Sóley Stefánsdóttir thinks of the music on her second album, she also thinks of a bluish hue, she says. On the cover, this is once again captured by her friend Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir, who played in Sóley’s former band Seabear and has since been responsible for the design of Sóley’s records. Against a dark blue background we see a serious-looking Sóley whose face is dissolving. It seems as though someone is draining the colour and with it the life energy from her from above.
Out and into the studio
The Sóley sitting in front of a bookshelf, looking at her computer screen, looks different. She is bathed in the warm Icelandic evening sun and her expression is not at all as sombre as on the cover of »Ask The Deep«. When she’s not adjusting her oversized glasses, she’s laughing or looking pensive. Even when her daughter starts crying in another room, she doesn’t appear bothered. Despite working on »Ask The Deep«, she hasn’t let it get in the way. »My daughter was born in March and I started two or three months later, having started writing while I was pregnant. Motherhood is crazy. I just had to get out and go to the studio. She could have spent another year working on »Ask The Deep,« Sóley says, but she wanted to deliver the ten songs fresh and new rather than work on them too much. Some of the tracks were finished just the day before the final mix.
As if in passing, she released another mini LP in July called »Krómantik«. She wrote it while she was studying composition and self-released it in 2011 in a very small pressing, including the sheet music. »I really wanted to release it to fill the time between the two albums. So I forced my record company to do it,« she laughs. The ghostly sound of »Krómantik« is very different from her début album »We Sink«, which was released the same year Sóley wrote the eight tracks. »At that time I was more concerned with classical compositional techniques,« she explains. »The pieces are parts of larger works, mostly consisting of five parts, one of which was a piano piece.« The EP, which is almost entirely without vocals, is made up of those very compositions. »Ask The Deep«, on the other hand, is more like its predecessor: there are more rhythms, more familiar structures and, above all, Sóley’s voice to be heard.
Against the darkness
The themes, however, have changed. They are, in their own way, as blue as the background colour of the »Ask The Deep« cover artwork: not easy to grasp, but clearly imbued with a melancholic heaviness. »I like to mix pop with something that makes you think a bit more,« she says of her music. Pure clichés are not enough for her. The same goes for the lyrics, which are strongly influenced by the texts Sóley reads. Alongside internationally renowned authors such as Edgar Allen Poe, it is above all the Icelandic poet Davíð Stefánsson who, at the beginning of the 20th century, put the dark side of his homeland into words. »My music is visual in that it reflects colours, feelings and places. I always see the same things when I sing the songs. It’s like dreaming, like watching a story unfold. It works in a similar way to reading a poem,« explains Sóley. Her colour palette, on the other hand, ranges from navy blue to bluish black.
»I like dark stuff… Maybe because I’m afraid of it.«
Sóley
»I like dark stuff,« she says, adding thoughtfully, »Maybe because I’m afraid of it. Darkness scares me.« So is her artistic exploration of it a kind of coping strategy? »Maybe. Especially since my new album has become very personal, covering the last two or three years. A new life has started for me and meditating on it has done me a lot of good. But I’m not singing about my pregnancy or what it’s like to have a child.« Sóley’s lyrics tend to be more abstract, although they sometimes refer to real events, such as the song »Ævintýr«, which is based on the true story of a Brazilian man who was buried alive. Sóley attributes the frankness of her lyrics to the limitations of her vocabulary. »English is not my first language, so my lyrics are a bit childish. I can’t express myself precisely.« But lyrics don’t always have to be like that. And that’s why people understand her better, she thinks.
The apparent contrast between the person Sóley Stefánsdóttir and her music surprises many. At first glance, the lively woman with the oversized glasses has little in common with the scowling, washed-out figure against the dark blue background on the cover of »Ask The Deep«. »But it would be terrible if I were just gloomy. But that’s the way it is: We all think of deep, sad and dark things. We just have to have the strength to deal with it,« she says, adding with a laugh, »At least I only sing happy songs to my daughter.«
