Iceland’s Tilbury is a bit of a buzz-band at the moment, at least in Reykjavik circles and increasingly further afield. As so often with Iceland’s pool of musical talent, sharing band members is the norm and individuals like to swop around between bands, and this pop-folk quintent is no different, being made up of members from bands such as Hjaltalín, Valdimar, Sin Fang and Amiina.

What started out as a solo project for lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Þormóður Dagsson, soon expanded when in search of a band to record the album. Tilbury’s debut Exorcise was released last month on Icelandic label Record Record and is available as a digital download from Gogoyoko and via iTunes.

The album starts out on a high with critically-acclaimed single ‘Tenderloin’ and, quite frankly, only gets better from there. The album has a bit of everything, from Grizzly Bear-esque ‘Sunblinds’ to breezy synth-happy songs like ‘Riot’, and is pretty much a plethora of poppy and choppy-guitar goodness (‘Drama’ and ‘Picture’). The penultimate ‘Electric Buggaloo’ stands out as ‘the loud track’ (just in case anyone thought the band didn’t rock out from time to time), before a slower pace ensues as the album is wrapped up with ‘Filet Mignon’. (Hmm… I only just noticed the red meat thread that links that the songs sandwiching this album. I’m guessing the band are meat lovers? Now I have a dilemma, am I allowed to like meat-related songs as a vegetarian? Yes, it seems.)

So here are a couple of musical tasters for you, and also some titbits of information:

-The official music video for ‘Tenderloin’ features clips from the Icelandic TV-film by Vidar Vikingsson, Tilbury (1987). Based on the short story Tilbury by Þórarinn Eldjárn. The video was edited by 10.000 milligrömm.

-The artist responsible for the cartoon band members and album artwork is none other than Iceland’s most famous cartoonist Hugleikur Dagsson.

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Exorcise – LP. Released on iTunes: 7 May 2012