Kalli

Icelandic singer-songwriter tries the Nashville skyline

A trip to Nashville for the new album is often a gamble, but Karl Henry´s hunch that a bunch of A-list sessioneers would enhance his second solo outing proves wellfounded. His dreamy vocals aren´t an obvious choice for countryfication, but opener „Nothing At All“ boasts an Eagles-like chorus, and a wistful pedal steel enchants on „Laurel Canyon“. Henry‘s songs are sometimes generic and his fragility can become a whimper, yet back in Reykjavik, he´s plenty to feel happy about.

Neil Spencer
- uncut magazine

Former frontman of Without Gravity, Kalli (aka Karl Henry Hákonarson), has returned with his second offering Last Train Home. With a dark pop, folk and country feel to the album, Kalli’s vocals sound a bit like an Icelandic version of Bon Iver crossed with Jason Mraz. Meanwhile, his music is a mixture of acoustic guitars, strings and piano-with the occasional gospel singer thrown in for good measure.

The result is a fantastic mix of heartbreaking, dark and moody lyrics mixed with dreamy sunsets and hopeful outlooks. The album’s contrasting themes is expertly produced and complied by Kurt Storey and is as much of a product of Storey and Tennessee as it is of Kalli himself.

Starting the album with genteel, repetitive yet beautiful and melancholic Nothing At All Kalli gracefully follows onto the sunny, laidback country track Laurel Canyon. Tracks such as Shine on Me offer a perfect respite from the moody nature of the lyrics with a harmonica led melody and backing vocals by former bandmate Hallgrímur Hallgrímsson- it’s a song that falls somewhere between Bob Dylan and Gavin De Graw.

While tracks such as Back to Blue, This is Goodbye and Nothing At All sound like they belong as a backing song to some American angst ridden drama like One Tree Hill or Greys Anatomy. They all easily fall into the simplistic Joshua Radin type style.

Tracks like the mesmerising Lullaby and title track Last Train Home sound perfect for reflecting on the past, travelling off into the sunset, wandering around country meadows or simply unwinding to after a hard day at the office.

Overall Last Train Home is a stunning piece of work which is emotional, understated and contemporary all at once. Last Train Home is simply perfect for taking you away to your own idyllic place in your mind.

9/10 - never enough notes

The second album from Icelandic singer-songwriter Kalli sounds as if he‘s spent the last decade distilling the sad, swooning singer-songwriter style down to its very essence. That, of course, means that it sounds a little like everything else but much can be forgiven for the soft piano introduction to ´Black To Blue´, the shivery feast that is ´Laurel Canyon´with its layered vocals, hint of pedal steel and gorgeous melody, and th irresistible chorus of ´Smoke´, to name but three.
Occasionally he goes a little too far, as with the chorus for´Shine On Me´, whose beat and cadence come straight from ´The Weight´, but in general this is the sort of gorgeous music you could lose yourself in for days. There are fragile vocals and great tunes, and if the lyrics tend to the predictable they are never trite or obvious.
There´s nothing particularly new or earthshattering here, and perhaps the music overshadows the words, wich is somewhat opposite of the norm, but this is a hugely listenable album and, in its own way and on its own terms, a small masterpiece.

Jeremy Searle
- R2 Magazine

The lure of Laurel Canyon stretches far and wide – to Iceland in Karl "Kalli" Henry's case, though he actually travelled to Nashville to record Last Train Home, surmising that top sessioners like Buddy Spicher, Hargus "Pig" Robbins and "Gentleman" Lloyd Green were best equipped to realise his country-rock dream.

He was right: Green's pedal-steel oozes like sweet cream over Kalli's lilting delivery and mellifluous harmonies on "Nothing At All" and "Laurel Canyon", where he paints himself as "a Californian, comin' home, to your sunny days and my home-grown". Indeed, many of these songs dwell on home and family, and by extension gentler times, evoked in a fireside glow of twinkling guitars and occasional haunted harmonica. The Eagles would be proud. - independent