The Singles Jukebox

Rapper; No. 1 on Icelandic Spotify; not a translated Belly cover…

[Video][Website]
[5.17]

Katie Gill: Glad to know that mediocre rap with backing beats that took 30 minutes to make on a computer in someone’s basement transcends national boundaries.
[4]

Juana Giaimo: Bands like Sigur Rós and Of Monsters and Men have made us believe that the only kind of music that Iceland can make is celestial and pure. In this sense, “Silfurskotta” sounds refreshing, but I still feel Emmsjé Gauti’s rather raspy voice lacks flow and overshadows Aron Can’s quiet hook.
[5]

Cassy Gress: Emmsjé’s earnest, worn rap about being one of those guys who is ashamed that he never calls girls back (but probably isn’t changing any time soon) is buoyed by the rainy highway synths, but sunk by Aron Can’s comparatively lifeless chorus.
[5]

Iain Mew: If you’d just played me the sweet outro and the way the bass and beat swims into the first verse in slow motion, I’d say evidence pointed to there being a great song in between. Unfortunately what’s actually between is barely more than a slideshow transition between those two ideas.
[4]

Brad Shoup: Timid trap production — the drums click like distant cicadas — and a slightly less po-faced Mike Posner in Aron Can. Gauti’s vocal falls to earth in a peculiar way; the strings don’t match, thank goodness, and it’s curious that they get so much real estate at the end.
[5]

Adaora Ede: Did anyone else lack the knowledge that silfurskotta, or silverfish is a sort of insect? I had assumed it was literally a fish, but even knowing that a silverfish is a bug did not explain much else for the application of the term in the song. So, in the case of the lack of online Anglophone context for it, “Silfurskotta” takes an alternate perception in order to delve into the song itself — the dichromatic tone of the team of rapper Emmsjé Gauti and singer Aron Can. Gauti’s verses are black and white without slipping into mundanity. Can mewls forlornly in shades of grey fueled by an orchestra of string instruments and synths. His hook reaches into another realm, urging for another track to easily be constructed from Can’s muted soundscape. I There will always be that consistent disenchantment with recycled minimalist concepts in a genre that is built around the grandiose and bravado. And here, I’m definitely not impressed by the subtle production but by the amount of emotion put into such a confessional (as inferred from assumed cognates Bacchus and sex). There’s also the contrast of the two aforementioned rap tropes to the eponymous silverfish, an insect found mainly in squalor. It’s not an atypical comparison in any form of music, but there is a strength in knowing you don’t need a lexicon to sympathize someone else’s pipe dream.
[8]