Jetpackstelpan – Gróa
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What are they singing about? Doesn’t much matter. Following a round of Brennivin shots, we’re 10 feet from the stage in a jammed, low-ceilinged club in Reyjkavik. Four young women are up there doing an art-punk thing, occasionally singing in English – ‘I’m in my grannypants, I’m in my grannypants’ – but mostly aflame with Bjorkesque fervour, often screaming in high-pitched, delerious Nordic girlpunk. A high point of the Gróa show is Jetpackstelpan, which translates as Jet Pack Girl, a strange little thing that grows on you with repeated listenings and – thanks to an English aside by drummer Hrafnhildur Einarsdóttir near the end of the song – seems to be about the exhilaration of flying solo to the moon. You can apparently do that from Reyjkavik – guess it’s got something to do with geothermal power.