Three months ago, I—admittedly—had no idea who or what JFDR was, and that was my first mistake. After spending countless hours consuming six years of work, it became clear that the solo project of Icelandic singer/songwriter Jófríður Ákadóttir is mystifying, and everyone should be ensconcing themselves in a blanket of her sublime, experimental electro-folk. Since 2017, she’s made a handful of LPs, an EP and two scores.
In brilliant ways, Ákadóttir obliterates the metronome that the industry has provided her. If someone tells her to go right, she’ll go left. But, her most-masterful stroke of singularity arrives in her ability to shape-shift between worlds: At one moment, she is fiddling with Eno-esque ambience; the next, she is conjuring Bon Iver resplendents atop dainty, plucky acoustic guitars.
Ákadóttir halves the album with “Flower Bridge,” a beautiful, instrumental gap filler that doesn’t feel like filler at all. Conjuring-era Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Ákadóttir’s synths mesh perfectly with Wilkinson’s langspil. Like the title suggests, it’s a bridge to someplace new, a paradise taking shape as “Valentine”—an ornate composition rife with blips of piano that crawl from the belly of swelling, wind-trodden pads and culls.