Icelandic musician Ásgeir releases new album 'Bury the Moon'

Bury the Moon, the third album from the 27-year-old Ásgeir, has arrived.

Ásgeir announced the record in October with its first single ‘Youth’. As its title indicates, ‘Youth’ digs through the artist’s childhood memories. “Do you recall the things that used to give us joy? When our imagination could take us anywhere,” Ásgeir sings in his familiar soaring vocal style.

‘Youth’ was written with Ásgeir’s father, the poet Einar Georg Einarsson. It’s a tale of innocence supported by plucked acoustic guitars and piano. The addition of horns and a marching snare beat bring the song to an uplifting finale.

Watch: Asgeir – Youth

The album’s second single ‘Lazy Giants’ followed in December. The accompanying music video – directed by Ásgeir with Guðmundur Kristinn Jónsson – finds the musician strumming an acoustic guitar in front of many crumbling artefacts and scenes of natural beauty.

Ásgeir dropped two further songs from the record in late January as well as announcing dates for a 2020 Australian tour. Album opener ‘Pictures’ is indicative of Ásgeir’s intention get back to basics on this record. The song’s cinematic video, meanwhile, is visibly inspired by the films of Quentin Tarantino.

“The director felt like the song was kind of split in half, the verses are melancholic and sad while the choruses are brighter and more hopeful and so the video tries to express those emotions on the screen,” said Ásgeir.

Watch: Ásgeir – Pictures

Bury the Moon is Ásgeir’s first album since 2017’s Afterglow. His debut album, Dýrð í dauðaþögn, brought him fame in his native Iceland in 2012. The following year he teamed up with Iceland-based American songwriter John Grant to create an English language version of the album.

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The resulting Into the Silence came out towards the end of 2013 and found an immediate following in Australia. The record debuted at #8 on the ARIA charts and Ásgeir’s since visited the country on four separate occasions.