Crystals, the first single from this album, topped the Billboard adult alternative songs chart – something this Icelandic quintet’s more celebrated compatriot Björk has never achieved. It’s clear why the band have connected with their audience: the lyrics play up their roots, with references to fantastical mountains and forests, but they’re couched in universally comprehensible indie-rock, chorus heaped upon singalong chorus. Beneath the Skin hasn’t moved on much from their debut, but its conflation of nature and bombast often hits the spot. It opens with a bracing trio that works as a mini-suite: Crystals is a full-bodied guitar-slugger that’s followed by the queasy soft-rocker Hunger, in which the singer balefully envisages herself as a wolf; by the third track, the band collapse into warm harmonies and dappled folk-pop – and, in fact, it’s the latter that tug hardest at the heart.
