Olof Arnalds Debuts English Language Song Crazy Car Via Stereogum

Beautiful and beguiling Ólöf Arnalds debuts the "soft, dreamy" video for "Crazy Car""Crazy Car" from her upcoming LP on One Little Indian, Innundir skinni, via Stereogum.

Ólöf announces even more US fall tour dates before dates opening for AIR in France
and her November tour dates with Blonde Redhead.

Brooklyn Vegan debuted title track "Innundir skinni."
Watch the video for "Innundir skinni" as debuted by Stereogum and grab the MP3!

The Wall Street Journal recently published a thoughtful profile of Ms. Arnalds
and WNYC is featuring a full live show performance for streaming.

Full tour dates and more music below!

TOUR DATES
Oct 8 - First Unitarian Chapel - Philadelphia, PA
Oct 9 - Joe's Pub - NY, NY
Oct 11 - IOTA - Washington, DC
Oct 15 - Wexner Center - Columbus, OH
Oct 18 - Schubas - Chicago, IL
Nov 14 - House of Blues - San Diego, CA
Nov 15 - Glass House - Pamona, CA
Nov 16 - The Music Box @ Fonda - LA, CA
Nov 19 - Warfield Theater - San Francisco, CA
Nov 20 - Roseland - Portland, OR
Nov 21 - Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, BC
Nov 24 - The Showbox at the Market - Seattle, WA
Nov 26 - The Depot - Salt Lake City, UT
Nov 27 - Ogden Theatre - Denver, CO
Nov 29 - Warehouse Live Studio - Houston, TX
Nov 30 - Granada Theater - Dallas, TX
Dec 1 - La Zona Rosa - Austin, TX

w/ Blonde Redhead

Ólöf visited the TONY offices for a very special acoustic performance.
NPR featured Ólöf's "timeless folk and nursery rhymes" on All Things Considered.

Pitchfork debuted Ólöf's duet with Bjork, "Surrender"
as well as her cover of cover of Arthur Russell's "Close My Eyes" -
a studio version of that cover is the B-side of the "Innundir skinni" 7" single.

"Since we met ('we' being me and Tommy, my drummer) Olof 3 or 4 years ago in Iceland, she's been one of our favorite musicians." - Jonathan Richman

"She has a really idiosyncratic sense of chord structure and a voice somewhere between a child and an old woman! She has her own individuality, and the best is yet to come."- Bjork

UK praise for Innundir skinni
MOJO Four Stars
"Olof Arnalds might well be Icelands next major musical export. She's the possessor of a singlular affecting voice, a less elfin Johanna Newsome by way of Kate Bush and her songs sung in both Icelandic and English, are as timeless and hook laden as they are delightfully idiosyncratic"

UNCUT Four Stars
"Arnalds has placed assorted guitar and violin with Mum and Mugison. but her solo work tends to be spartan, traditional-sounding Nordic troubadour songs- sung in English and Icelandic,--over plinky plonky accompaniment on assorted string instruments. Some sound like strange nursery rhymes (Jonathan), some like surreal Eurovision entries ("Vinur Minn"). All are very good indeed.

Q
The "Icelandic Vashti Bunyan"
"...what really matters here is texture, delivered in abundance as she plucks and picks her way around harps, guitars and all manner of acoustic backing, her celestial freak-folk voice bewitching the listener"

US press fell in love with Ólöf and Við og við
New York Times
"On Vid og Vid her voice is high and clear, with a gentle quaver that humanizes its otherworldly purity, and she accompanies it with only an instrument or two - picking a lute, a harp, an acoustic guitar - in melodies with the diatonic simplicity of folk songs. The songs are mostly about love, family and friends, and Ms. Arnalds puts them on the intimate scale of lullabies."

Bust
"Arnalds' delicate, glacial folk songs are sparsely backed by guitar and/or harp, leaving rom for her pitch-perfect vocals to take senter stage...she comes off like a nordic Joanna Newsom or Vashti Bunyan. God knows what she's singing about, but's very often beautiful."

Rolling Stone
"Lovely, transcendent Icelandic singer-songwriter writes the kind of music that populates the dreams of angels - fluttering folk songs as fragile as tiny china swans."

eMusic
One of the 100 Best Albums of the Decade

Paste - 8.5
"Við og Við's earnest, heartfelt declarations are a welcome change from the too-cool posturing of so much of today's popular music. Familial affection will never go out of style; neither will deftly plucked stringed instruments, subtle orchestral swells and a songbird lilt this impossibly lovely."

Venus - 4 Stars
"Listening to her music could arguably be more of a visceral experience than a purely audible one....Maybe it's the haunting melodies, the way she wraps her delicate voice around every syllable, or the way she deftly plucks away at the various stringed instruments she plays (guitar, violin, koto, and charango) that will inevitably strike many chords deep within the listener. Ólöf Arnalds delivers ballads straight from the heart, the kind that speak a universal language and which will never go out of style."

Time Out New York
"Olof Arnalds has the kind of voice that can silence a room, such is its sweetness. And high-profile fans such as Björk have been very vocal about Arnalds' awesome sound."

The Tale of Ólöf Arnalds and the Recording of Innundir skinni
Ólöf Arnalds is an Icelandic singer and multi-instrumentalist. Classically educated on the violin and self-taught on viola, guitar and charango, Ólöf's most distinctive asset is, nonetheless, her voice. A voice of instantly captivating, spring water chasteness possessed of a magical, otherworldly quality that is simultaneously innocent yet ancient ("somewhere between a child and an old woman" according to no less an authority than Björk).

While she has been favorably compared with the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Judee Sill and Kate Bush, Ólöf's approach to making music remains highly individual: playful but intimate; accessible and uplifting, yet deeply personal and suffused with a timeless mystique that goes beyond the puckish inscrutability of her native tongue. Ólöf has also quickly proved herself as a magnetic, utterly self-assured stage performer, reliant as much on screwball humour, vaudevillian charm and even outright bawdiness, as much as the contrasting delicacy of her song delivery.

Recorded by Sigur Rós's Kjartan Sveinsson, directly to tape, Ólöf's 2007 debut, Við Og Við is an album of ingeniously adorned whole take performances, whose charged minimalism creates an inimitable world of its own. The album would duly accrue a sheaf of accolades at home, including Best Alternative Album at the Iceland Music Awards and a Record of the Year gong from Iceland's principal daily newspaper, Morgunblaðið. Upon it's international release in 2009, it would elicit gushing notices from the likes of The New York Times, Vanity Fair, NME and SPIN and prompt MOJO to herald Ólöf as "Reykjavik's answer to Kate Bush." Time Out New York described her having "... the kind of voice that can silence a room, such is its sweetness", while Rolling Stone described her songs being "fragile as tiny china swans". Meanwhile, Paste magazine would dub Við Og Við "impossibly lovely" and vote it Number 38 in its Top 100 album list. Not to be outdone, eMusic named it among the 100 best albums of the decade.

Recorded throughout 2009, Ólöf's sophomore album, Innundir skinni was produced once again at Sundlaugin by Kjartan Sveinsson and co-produced by Davíð Þór Jónsson. The album boasts more extensive instrumentation and additional players than on Við Og Við but feels effortless; the additional musicians' performances woven into the body of the songs, never overpowering them, with Ólöf's typically empyrean vocals upfront and proud. The album includes both Ólöf's first recorded songs delivered in English and her first duets - with Ragnar Kjartansson (Crazy Car) and Björk (Surrender).

It's her spontaneity and charm, as much as two albums of sublime song craft and ineffable, unforced Icelandic charisma, which make Ólöf Arnalds such a uniquely appealing musician into whose confidence we listeners can't help but want to be taken.

Ólöf on MySpace
http://www.olofarnalds.com/