Concert Review: Kaleo Is Icelandic Rock-Blues
If Mumford & Sons united with the Black Keys to create the ultimate band it would be Kaleo. Jökull Júlíusson, the band’s lead singer, literally sounds like the perfect vocal mash-up of Dan Auerbach and Marcus Mumford. For a band that hails from Iceland, they perfectly capture the Rock & Roll, Blues soul born from the South.If I didn’t know Kaleo was from Iceland, I would have thought they were plucked from Nashville stardom. Their energy is that of a country crooner swooning to epic guitar runs and brass vocals of failed love. Just on the nature of Júlíusson’s voice you feel heartache. It is as if his voice is the literal sound a heart makes as its breaking. His singing runs into your soul like smooth whiskey. Rubin Pollock and Daníel Ægir Kristjánsson add an element of mysticism to their guitar playing. Their ability to make their guitar and bass sound as gritty as dirt but than as celestial as dream is one of a kind. Davíð Antonsson (drums) is a perfect percussion foundation for this band that is brimming with country soul. As they riff up their instrumentals and styles, they share the same brokenness and odd resilience you would hear from an Allman Brothers song. I know that is a hefty comparison, but it is well deserved for this band that encompasses a modern manifestation of 70’s rock.
Kaleo – Way Down We Go (Official Video)
Like 70’s rock, song range is alternated between folksy vulnerability and loud, in your face anguish. All The Pretty Girls is a prime example of folksy vulnerability as the band simply repeats, “I’ll wait”. The songs is a rightfully fan favorite because it epitomizes the singular emotion of waiting for love to be responded. Its artful repetition of lyrics is representative of the consistent perseverance we all have at wanting love to be returned. I Can’t Go On Without You and Way Down We Go are like drag- out brawls of emotional turmoil. They are the musical version of a soul writhing in anxiety over how to let go of a tumultuous love, whether it is for a woman or a falling society. Each epitomizes the heaviness of hopelessness one can feel as a loner in the world. Their newest hit No Good is exactly the “in your face” anguish that Rock N’ Roll is known to give. It is loud, dynamic, and seems like an invitation to let all your flaws out. It simmers with a brutishness of a man giving into his faults and letting go of all reservations.
Kaleo’s music is intoxicating because it sounds like it came from a jukebox in a Louisiana bar. It resonates with a soulfulness of old, which only plays up the band’s look of Brooklyn indie-folk musicians. Though on sight they may have the image of some young “hipsters”, their sound makes them seem like a group old, wise men, eager to tell of their heartbreak.
Kaleo – No Good (Official Video)
