This year Iceland Airwaves celebrate their 10th anniversary amidst a horrible economic crisis that has brought the nation on the brink of bankruptcy. However, moving about Reykjavik yesterday on the first day of the festival you didn’t get the sense of a nation on its knees. People seemed happy and carefree, taking a break from the whole thing and proving the remedial power of music.

The festival itself seems to be business as usual. A well-oiled machine presenting around 200 bands and DJ’s in four days, with two-thirds being local talent. I caught a bunch of those at cool club venue Tunglid, all talent on fresh new label Kimi Records’ roster, and it ranged from pure brilliance to so-so, with Borko and Hjaltalín serving up the first, Morðingjarnir and Hellvar the latter.

In between Benni Hemm Hemm (photo), the man who’s put cool in brass band, delivered a tight set featuring mainly songs from his prime new album, ‘Murat St. Calunga’, with ‘Veiðiljóð’ having to be highlighted, while local favorites, party-poprockers Retro Stefson – a Reykjavik seven-piece not entirely unlike Danish act Are We Brothers? – got the full house, well, partying with great tracks like ‘Paul Is Dead’ and ‘Wolf The Boy Who Cried’.

First up was rocktronica quartet Hellvar, who released their debut ‘Bat Out Of Hellvar’ last year. I really quite like the album (will tell you about it soon), but as live act they’re pretty much only kept alive by frontwoman Heida, a wonderful entertainer with immense expression in her delivery taking the absolute highlight of their half hour, ‘Nowhere’, to withering heights.

They were followed by punk three-piece Morðingjarnir (The Murderers), fronted by a short, big-bearded guitarist and a tall, rail-thin bassist – in stature a duo reminding me of Laurel & Hardy. It’s punk as it’s supposed to be: Slightly out of tune, trashy and build on power chords and a drummer on really hard work. Quite entertaining at first, but around mid-set the initial charm faded and so did my attention.

Borko aka Björn Kristjánsson, however, demanded full attention. Backed by a handful very competent musicians, the (mad) professor look-a-like turned Tunglid into his laboratory with us as willing test animals, seduced by the beautiful soundscapes of debut album ‘Celebrating Life’. Nothing short of brilliant!

As were indie-pop collective Hjaltalín. I saw them at SPOT Festival in Denmark earlier this year, and though really good then the home field advantage took them and their songs from debut ‘Sleepdrunk Seasons’ to a whole new level. This band is tighter than a nun’s and got two big aces in the vocal work of songwriter-guitarist Högni Egilsson and Sigríður Thorlacius. Again brilliant!