Ásgeir today shared his urgent, skittering new song “Against The Current,” the latest single from his forthcoming new album Julia, recently featured by NPR’s All Songs Considered as one of‘The Best 2026 Albums We’ve Heard So Far.’ On the track–which is accompanied by an Einar Egilsson-directed video–the acclaimed Icelandic artist captures the quiet defiance of self-reclamation. Featuring a brass arrangement from Samuel Jón Samúelsson, “Against The Current” builds into a triumphant swell, while lyrically it is about finally seeing oneself clearly–shaking expectations and embracing the possibility of change. “The lyrics paint a picture of me seeing myself really for the first time,” he explains. “Seeing that I’ve been stuck in my ways, letting other peoples’ opinions of me change who I am and wanting to break from that pattern. To not let anyone, including myself, put me in a box and not limit my potential through what ideas someone might have of me. Realising that there’s many versions of me that need to shine as well. I could start a black metal band tomorrow if I wanted to.” Julia will be released on February 13th via One Little Independent Records and is now available for pre-order.
“Against The Current” follows additional album singles “Sugar Clouds,” “Smoke” and “Ferris Wheel”–which have drawn support from Brooklyn Vegan, Atwood Magazine, The Line Of Best Fit, and more–and arrives as Asgeir announces headline tour dates in the UK, Europe, and North America this spring. A current itinerary is below and tickets for the North American dates–which include a June 14th show at Los Angeles’ The Lodge Room and a June 30th show at New York’s Le Poisson Rouge–go on sale this Friday, January 16th at 10am local time.
On Julia, his fifth studio album, Ásgeir enters intriguing and uncharted territory: for the first time in his long and celebrated career, he penned the album entirely himself, after years of mainly using the poetry of his father (Einar Georg Einarsson) and friend (Júlíus Aðalsteinn Róbertssonas) as his lyrics, and engaging translators such as John Grant. The result is a deeply contemplative body of work, steeped in nostalgia, which sees him meditating on past regrets as well as hopes for the future, guided by the spectre of the album’s title character. “Julia is about losing my way, and the struggle to find it again. When I was deciding on a name for the album, this shapeshifting figure stood out as some kind of throughline for the songs,” Ásgeir explains. “Julia is the namesake fictional character of one of the LP’s songs, but she also takes on different forms throughout the record: an inner voice, a guiding motherly voice, a ghost, sometimes even an ex-girlfriend.”
Ásgeir has long been lauded for his intricate folk-pop, lush production, and wistful, emotive falsetto. Julia marks a shift toward not just lyrical self-reliance, but cathartic directness–songs that feel both exquisitely performed and comfortably lived in. “This was kind of the first time I was writing lyrics totally on my own,” he shares. “It was scary. I’m still trying to find myself within that. But I tried to open myself up and I learned a lot through that process, and it was definitely therapeutic for me.” This new sense of vulnerability threads through the album’s ten tracks, written and recorded over the course of nearly two years. The production, co-developed with longtime collaborator Guðm. “Kiddi” Kristinn Jónsson, remains organic and understated, allowing Ásgeir’s voice–most importantly his voice as a writer–to come forward. Throughout Julia, Ásgeir revisits the past with an unflinching eye, sharing moments of self-reflection, self-reclamation, disconnection, relationships, aging, and hope. Musically, the record leans into Ásgeir’s long-held love of folk and Americana.
