PINK STREET BOYS - Heiglar

I can't contain myself anymore. This you have to know. We have an album of the year candidate on our hands. I give you Heiglar (Reykjavík Record Shop) by Iceland's Pink Street Boys. Is it punk/garage rock maelstrom of stinky piss and vinegar? Of course it is! This is the Pink Street Boys after all. Are they the best at this? Well, yes, you dummy! It comes as easily to them as drinking cheap beer and throwing a tambourine into the face of an un-expecting audience member at a gig. But these factors are a given.

On Heiglar the boys turn a new leaf. We get a biographical, trouble-making- bridge-burning "fuck you" to everyone and everything. Those feelings are palpable sonically but there's more. There's hope and love wrapped up in this foul mouthed stinger. This last bastion of loud and flammable rock 'n' roll shows us a more thoughtful side. Heiglar is deeply personal. It's their catchiest and most memorable effort yet.

This album offers the listener layers upon layers of samples, childhood dictaphone and video recordings, interludes and noise. This all has a purpose. It's an integral part of the Heiglar tapestry as it churns out many excerpts of life that comes as close to an outsider existence in Iceland as you are ever going to get via music that's at your very fingertips. Misunderstood but somehow all the better for it. This is Heiglar's essence.

Here we have album that is carefully sequenced, economic yet loaded with additional sounds, samples and additional instruments to craft an atmosphere that is uniquely theirs yet as true and real as on all their previous releases. But on Heiglar it is somehow a more visceral experience. The logical conclusion of rock lifers, rock survivors that never wavered no matter the trends at any given moment, no matter what anyone told them.

All Pink Street Boys releases to this point have been leading up to this masterpiece of riotous bitterness. Heiglar is instantly memorable and wholly unforgettable. [Reykjavík Record Shop]
- Birkir Fjalar