Though Iceland has a fertile music scene, it has produced few international names. The ones that have emerged—Björk, Sigur Rós, and, uh, Of Monsters and Men—tend to paint a picture to the outside world: A tiny nation filled with artsy, insular weirdos. Yet the scene there is bustling with all sorts of sounds: Black metal, punk rock, serrated electronic music, rap. And then there’s the chilly post-punk offered by Fufanu, Iceland’s most exciting young band.
Revolving around the core duo of Hrafnkell Flóki Kaktus Einarsson and Guðlaugur Halldór Einarsson (no relation; Icelandic names use patronymics), Fufanu has grown from an experimental techno duo (then known as Captain Fufanu, when Kaktus and Gulli were just teens) into purveyors of terse, claustrophobic post-punk, injected with bleary-eyed psychedelia and dystopian electronic textures. (Live, the band expands their sound into a raging, swaggering storm, though they’ve opted to reign it in on record thus far.) There is also a surprising amount of Britpop lurking in their DNA. Kaktus worked on Damon Albarn’s 2014 solo release Everyday Robots; Fufanu opened for the Britpop star later that year, and for Blur at Hyde Park in 2015. Though the band understandably chafes at the focus on their connection to Albarn, there’s no denying how their echoes of late-’90s Britpop enriches their music.
Sports is the group’s sophomore LP, following quickly on the heels of their late 2015 debut Few More Days to Go. It flows more than its predecessor, and trades their debut’s corroded guitar for glacier-cool synths and hissing electronic rhythms, both propulsive and meditative. Like many great post-punk groups before them, the band consistently sounds disaffected and removed. Lead single and standout “Sports” is a terse drawl of seemingly disconnected thoughts, a masterclass in building tension. “Bad Rockets” sounds like a Bond theme from an alternate timeline in which 007’s become an ashen-faced junkie, featuring the haunting refrain “Bad rockets hit—rockets fly above my head.”
The title Few More Days to Go was a refrain the band members would deliver to loved ones asking when they’d return home. Sports, though brooding at first glance, celebrates the little moments of homecoming, of reunion, of pleasant daily life. Kaktus, who lives with his girlfriend in Reykjavik, sings of young but stable love throughout. “Going out, with my love/Jump around like a six year old” on “Sports”; “Just hold me like I’m your fool/We’ll sleep on the back of the new moon” on “Your Fool”; “I said something about leaving soon/It’s drumming in my heart/And asking for restart” in “Restart.”
“Your Fool” and “Restart” form the record's conclusion, and they’re unlike anything else the band has done, vulnerable and beautiful. The disassociation and disaffection of the rest of the album suddenly makes sense in the rearview, a buildup to moments of pure, aching romanticism. They transform a solid album into something of an emotional journey, and hint strongly that beneath their low-key snarling, Fufanu have grander things on their minds.
