Last year, Faroese singer Eivør delivered nothing short of an emotional knock-out performance at Tuska Festival. She quite recently charmed Helsinki again as the opening act for HEILUNG, but I gloriously missed that opportunity, but as luck would have it, her European tour stopped by Helsinki once again on October 21st, 2025, at the Kulttuuritalo venue, and this time I managed to catch the show, albeit en route to Helsinki a typical traffic clusterfuck delayed me so much that I missed the first half of the first warm-up act.
I’m glad I caught the last couple of songs in Elinborg‘s set. She is another powerhouse singer from the Faroe Islands and, what I didn’t know until a little bit later in the evening, sister to Eivør. Had I been aware of this, I might have mentally prepared for being blown away by her sheer vocal prowess. Those two songs that I managed to catch were pretty standard atmospheric folktronica affairs, but the sheer vocal power elevated them to a league out of this world. As far as I could gather, she will be releasing a new album (her international debut, perhaps?) at the end of October – very soon, that is! So, if otherworldly electronic folk is your cup of tea, I reckon you could do yourself a favor by checking it out.
Icelandic singer-songwriter Ásgeir took the stage next and delivered a haunting mix of electronica and folk completely solo, alternating between his synth rig and an electric guitar over the course of the next 60 minutes or so. The set was divided into three sections, with the first part leaning more heavily on ambient and electronic soundscapes that nicely echoed the sound of SOHN‘s 2014 endeavor “Tremors,” minus the glitchtronics. Befittingly, Ásgeir‘s prominence in the vocal department did not shy away from that of Elinborg‘s. Those electronic songs traversed similar vocal terrain to Christopher Michael Taylor, the vocalist behind the SOHN alias, and knowing that Àsgeir comes from Iceland, I couldn’t avoid thinking about vintage Sigur Rós, either. The songs driven by the guitar in the middle section of the set resonated more with an almost Jeff Buckley-like aura, the realization of which did set off a good few goosebumps! Lastly, Ásgeir returned to the electronic realm for the rest of the set. I couldn’t help but notice that even at their most folksy footing, the songs weren’t carved out from the most clichéd hippie folk, but rather incorporated more contemporary sound, dipping their toes even in neo-classical tonality here and there. It’s one thing to pull a minimalist set like this and bring it home, but Àsgeir pulled it off solo, without a band. That was quite a feat!
Eivør‘s music is deeply connected to the nature of the Faroe Islands, drawing inspiration from its wild beauty and folklore. Like the traditional Faroese music, her contemporary take on the matter is pure, expressive, and untamed in its haunting blend of electronica, folk, and shamanistic ritual music. So, even though I was mentally prepared to be blown away, with that Tuska Festival performance still fresh in memory, Eivør went one louder and delivered a few nice surprises – with the biggest of them being the cover rendition of the PINK FLOYD song, “Us and Them,” from the absolute best album of all time, “Dark Side of the Moon.”
The set kicked off with the dark, tribal electronica of “Jarðartrá,” setting nothing short of a haunting tone for the show to come. Apart from a select few Nordic Noir and psybient acts, electronica and Shamanistic ritual music don’t usually mix too well, and this combination most often fails to capture the properly primal and spiritual feel in the music. Eivør need not worry in this respect. Right off the bat, the atmosphere was charged with something powerful and primordial, as though stemming from some ancient origins, or out of this world.
The cinematic feel of Eivør‘s music was even further pronounced when, after a few emotionally resonant and fever-dreamish songs, she played a potpourri of three songs from The Last Kingdom soundtrack. If you weren’t already transported to a different plane of reality, after this, you should have been. The sorrowful lament of “Hymn 49” wrapped up this cinematic three-piece tour de force and gave way to a unique blend of electronic pop and traditional Faroese folk in the song, “Let It Come,” from 2020’s “Segl.” It’s always nice when artists break genre stereotypes, but when it’s done with style, it’s even better.
By now, the audience had been served a few tear-jerkers already, but for me, the Kate Bush-like, haunting nostalgia of “Boxes” was the first song to really make me catch a lump in my throat. Unlike last year’s Tuska Festival, I wasn’t wearing corpse paint this time, so there was nowhere to hide from getting all teary-eyed. This time, I didn’t see people crying their eyes out, but I did notice couples hugging each other tighter on occasion. Luckily, this type of piercing melancholy and the brighter tones were meticulously balanced in the setlist – a case in point: the dewy-eyed nostalgia of “Boxes” was air-brushed with the fairy-dusted MASSIVE ATTACK vibes of “So Close to Being Free,” next.
Eivør introduced the next song by mentioning that she usually didn’t do covers, but on this evening she felt like doing one – and what a version it was! It’s always risky to touch on PINK FLOYD, not only because the band’s longtime fans are prone to being overly protective about their idols, but also because the magic of their music relies so heavily on the singular guitar prowess of David Gilmour. There is only way way to do it, and it is to own the song rather than trying to emulate its original soundscapes to a tee. Eivør did just that with the ambient version of “Us and Them.” It was haunting.
Had the show ended here, I would have been happy like a dog with two tails, but there were three more songs in the set before the encore. Last year’s “Enn” gave us two of them – its title track, contrasting gloom with a note of optimism, and “Upp Ur Øskuni,” which featured Elinborg on vocals, too. At this point, I realized they were sisters. This devilishly anthemic banger could have closed the night rather beautifully, but the closer, “Trøllabundin,” did it in a more spellbinding, mystical, and shamanistic way.
Then, of course, the absolute tear-jerker of a song, “Free Falling,” came as an encore. It was the very song that got people crying like babies at the Radio City tent at Tuska Festival 2024. Had not the set left me at a loss for words already, this song would have done it, again. It’s not a song, really. It’s a peek beyond the thin veil of reality into the realm of something far more transcendental – a vivid testament of Eivør‘s vocal range. Oh, yes, she was the star of the evening! I have to give credit to her band as well – Mattias Kapnas on keyboards, Mikael Blak on bass and synths, and Per I Højgaard Petersen on drums. They all did an amazing job, but I guess it’s fairly easy when you have a frontlady of this caliber. Now, as the year is drawing to a close, little by little, I should soon start contemplating which concert experience to rank as the absolute highlight of this year. I thought it would be an easy call since the recent show by THE SMASHING PUMPKINS was something I’d been waiting for almost 30 years, but… As amazing as they were, this particular evening might exalt Eivør‘s performance above everything I’ve seen this year – and that says quite a lot. She did it again.
Written by Jani Lehtinen
Setlist
- Jarðartrá
- Salt
- Gullspunnin
- Í Tokuni
- Lívstræðrir
- The Last Kingdom
- Hymn 49
- Let It Come
- Boxes
- So Close to Being Free
- Us and Them (PINK FLOYD cover)
- Enn
- Upp Úr Øskuni (with Elinborg)
- Trøllabundin
Encore:
- Falling Free
