Atlantica - Iceland Review

Mica Allan met with the enigmatic Icelandic born, New Zealand based singer,
Hera Hjartardóttir, and chatted about parallel universes, Elvis
impersonators and soaking in a bath tub of red wine.
Mica Allan: You hail from Iceland and moved to New Zealand with
your family when you were a teenager. How has that affected you, living
in two such different but similar island nations yet at the other end
of the world from one other?
Hera Hjartardóttir: Oh, it’s had a huge effect, I think if I hadn’t
grown up in New Zealand, I’d be a different person. There are so many
things that are so different and so many things that are the same. New
Zealand is such a relaxed and lovely country, it has more of a picnic
mentality, it’s coming here but people are very busy in Iceland. I’d love
to see a parallel universe and to see if I’d have grown up in Iceland what
kind of music I’d be making.
MA: You write your own songs, and there is a real wisdom and poignancy
to them and yet you are only 27. Where does that come from?
HH: Life experience and I really love the kind of music that tells a story.
My music’s inspired by things in life.
MA: Your songs explore a woman who tries in vain to stop buying
shoes from the internet, an old boyfriend turning up and “biting you in
the ass” and a girl viewed as immaculate but who actually goes to bed
with her make up on and drinks coke for breakfast. Where do you get
your inspiration from for these stories?
HH: A lot of these are true stories. I found a nice looking pair of
shoes on the internet and they were actually plastic and hideous.
“Immaculate out” is about the girl who’s afraid to leave the house
without make up on and never lets anyone see who she really is. Yeah,
it was good to get that one out, I need to get things out of my system,
that’s why I write.
MA: What is your natural instinct, to write lyrics in Icelandic or
English?
HH: Probably English, I started in English but before that I wrote
poetry in Icelandic. When I came to Iceland people said, “Oh, you
have to release an Icelandic album” and I stomped my foot down and
said, “I don’t live in Iceland” but then all of a sudden all of these songs
started coming in Icelandic and I was really enjoying it. I then released
an album of all Icelandic songs. I still enjoy singing in Icelandic and I
translate the songs a bit before I sing them in New Zealand. I like to
sing the old traditional songs, too, things that mean something from
my past. I’ve been singing a couple of songs that my grandmas sang to
me, so it feels really good to do them.
MA: Your video “The Devil and Me” contains real photographs from
your childhood and you dedicated your album Live at Als to your grandmother.
How much has your family influenced you as a musician?
HH: So, so much. There’s no one else in my family who is a musician
but they’ve always been really supportive. When I was really young and
starting to write poetry, they took me out to bars and I’d do open mike
nights and be performing with drag queens and Elvis impersonators. I
was this 13-year-old girl doing live poetry and it was quite rough but it
was the best school I could have possibly gone to. When I started writing
songs my dad set up the computer at home and got all the software
to record my first album and we had a friend in the music industry who
came and helped mix it. So my parents are the reason that it’s felt so
easy as they’ve always supported me. Of course my grandma, she was
awesome, she passed away about four years ago and she always used
to sing to me. She taught me everything, really.
MA: I loved the song and video “Feel so Good” which featured one of
your beloved cats. Can you tell me a little bit about the background to
the song and the video, in particular—it looked like you were having
the time of your life making that!
HH: It was so much fun, the song came when I was feeling a bit naughty,
and it’s about things that feel really good. We really wanted to fill a
bathtub of kittens but it’s hard to get that many kittens, so we decided
to fill a bathtub of red wine and be drinking water from a wine glass
in the bath, and other things like be covered in puppies and smashing
a TV. It was just all the things we could think of that would be fun to
do but that are slightly wrong.
MA: Can you give me a hint about what people can look forward to
with your new album?
HH: It’s going to have both Icelandic and English songs, but mostly
English, and the album has a kind of countryish vibe. It’s been two
years since the last album, which is too long, and I’ve got far too many
songs for it but it’s already here in my head! a
More information about all
things Hera can be found on
herasings.com