On the back of an exhausting US tour for their latest album We Built a Fire and with their songs popping up in numerous hit TV shows, one may think that all this attention might go to the heads of eccentric Icelandic indie group Seabear. We can be rest assured however, that this has not happened and that the band, according to guitarist Halldór (Dori) Ragnarsson, still see themselves as simple musicians and nothing more. Drop-d got a chance to speak to Ragnarsson about life in Seabear, on a break from the bands ever increasing schedule. Seabear started as the one man project of Sindri Mar Sigfusson, but through chance encounters in Reykjavik, it quickly escalated into a seven piece as Dori explains “It just happened. We all seemed to meet in a short space of time around the live scene in Reykjavik. Sindri asked us to play on a few tracks that he had been working on and it just evolved from that. Now we are all like a family and really enjoy writing and playing music together.”
In 2007 Seabear released their debut album The Ghost That Carried Us Away and followed this up in 2010 with the outstanding We Built A Fire, “On We Built A Fire we wrote the songs together”, describes Dori “it was like baking a cake at a kindergarten, some of us have a guitar riff or a drumbeat and the others add their input or idea to complete the song. When everyone is happy we know the song is finished.”
Although this all sounds easy and simplistic the album did have its share of problems, with the difficulty of trying to get all seven different personalities into the studio at the same time proving the biggest headache. “It took us a long time to finish that album,” Dori explicates, “we worked around it for almost two years, Sindri did all the recordings and it was sometimes hard to get us into the studio to finish it. When you are seven people doing the music together it can be complicated; not complicated necessarily about the music more so the logistics of it all. For the next record we are thinking about getting a producer to work with us.”
The success of the album in the states seems to have taken everyone in Seabear by surprise with the initial twenty five date tour expanding to over fifty due to phenomenal demand. “Yes it has been a really busy year for us. Around the world we have almost played a hundred gigs, but this is such a privilege to be able to tour the world and play our music. The fact that audiences in different countries know our music is such a thrill for us because in the end we are just a small indie band from Iceland and we will always just be musicians poor or not.” Dori added “I still don’t know why they want to use our music on the TV, this is a nice thing but it’s a very alien concept to me.”
The band have only played Ireland once supporting fellow Icelanders Mum here a few years ago, at a well received gig in Dublin. Dori still has fond memories of the place. “Yes, we liked it in Ireland a lot, in a lot of ways there are similarities to Iceland. I don’t know, sometimes there is nothing to do so you just meet up with your friends and make music. I got the impression that this is the same in Ireland from a few of the Irish musicians I have spoken to.” He continued “You guys can also be very proud of your whiskey which I really love and hopefully we will play in Ireland soon. I am personally going to scream at our booker as to why we have not been there for so long.”
So hopefully the bands booker will listen to these screams and get some live Seabear shows our side in the coming months. The album We Built A Fire is currently available and very worth a listen.
