There are two main approaches for listeners to ‘Mother Pearl’. Sit back and let it gently wash over you or listen attentively, tightly coiled to pick out tiny details. Both ways work because it is a record that manages to be simultaneously intimate and expansive, finding full expression of the qualities Gyda Valtysdottir has developed during her career. In her teens, she was a founding member of the electronic dreampop band múm before going to St Petersburg to study cello at the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory and later completing a double masters in classical composition and free improvisation. Over the course of her solo career, Valtysdottir has blended her classical training and improvisational fluency to create her own distinct sound that merges chamber music and electronics.
On ‘Mother Pearl’, which is her third album of fully original music, she is joined by an array of musicians who gently embellish the sound: Merope’s Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė and Bert Cools bring kanklės, guitar and subtle synth colours, Alex Sopp adds melodic wind instruments, Julian Sartorius contributes occasional drums, and Katie Buckley provides luscious harp embellishments. Her partner, Úlfur Hansson, recorded the album, played bass and Moog, as well as shaping the cello arrangements.
There are themes of wonder and interconnectedness that run through the album. It opens with the title track which was co-composed with Kjartan Sveinsson of Sigur Rós and sets the pattern. Her voice arrives without any introduction but it is slow and deliberate though with an emotional quiver, although on this song it is louder and clearer than the semi-whisper she uses elsewhere. There is layering of the vocals, alongside piano, cellos and ripples of icy percussion. Each verse ends with the word “miracle” and revolves around the idea of planting a seed.
Fortunately, ‘White Noise’ does not live up to its name. Unfurling, gorgeous harp notes give way to cello and electronics creating a quietly exhilarating orchestral feel. It is also one of the few tracks to have noticeable percussion. It was conceived in a fog-cloaked, cliff cabin with an ocean view and sees her looking inward. It epitomises the album’s distinct sense of landscape and self-examination. The harp and her voice flutter exquisitely on ‘Open Poem’, a song that in surveying “fragile pawns in cosmic play / mighty gods in their own game” hints at human insignificance within the wider universe but has her confessing “you have shown me how to be loved.”
Celebrating struggle, ‘Living Waters’ begins with her admitting “at every wrong turn I have found / a diamond of new perspective.” With its tale of “building moon from scattered debris” and ominous electronics, initially it sounds dystopian but then as she sings “headwinds honed my horns / and smoothed my thorns”, woodwinds emerge and the song opens up into something much more luscious. ‘Mirror’ is self-reflective and its subdued pace allows space for Valtysdottir’s vocals to be at their most emotional. In the Icelandic tradition, the verses of ‘Checking In’ are all so quiet as she “feels the collective pool of pain” but it opens up on the chorus which is one of the record’s most rhythmic episodes and sees her turning into Dr. Frasier Crane without the pomposity as she sings, “I’m listening / you don’t have to say a word.”
The harp creates an atmosphere of water trickling, an apt sensation for ‘Riverbed’ even though at the song’s beginning the river is without liquid. There are moments where the metaphors seem overstated (“the crevasse of the glacier / a gateway back to the womb”) but musically it is dreamy and sinuous. The solitary instrumental, ‘Horizon’, is stately and contemplative, leading into the concluding track, ‘Potency’. On this, her voice begins and ends with a fragile hush, rising as orchestration and electronics swell with new horizons unfolding.
Curiously, although ‘Mother Pearl’ only weighs in at nine songs and slightly under forty minutes, it somehow feels longer. Far from suggesting that it is boring, it is more a case of Valtysdottir magically freezing time, creating a sound world that is unhurried, immersive and simultaneously chilly and rather lovely.
Gyda Valtysdottir: Mother Pearl – Out 20 March 2026 (Marvada)
Valtysdottir ・Mother Pearl ( with Kjartan Sveinsson )
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
