Ten years on, the songs that made KALEO still hit like a thunderclap. On July 4, 2026, the Icelandic four-piece brought their A/B 10th Anniversary tour to a packed Queen Elizabeth Theatre, turning the plush, seated room into something closer to a revival tent. The night was built as a celebration of A/B, the 2016 debut that carried them out of Reykjavík and onto radio everywhere, and hearing that record’s blues-rock swings and hushed ballads in a proper theatre only underlined how well the songs have aged.
Opening the evening was Vincent Lima, and the young singer-songwriter proved a smart pairing for a crowd that came ready to feel something. Armed with warm, hook-filled songs and an easy, unpretentious charm, he won the theatre over quickly — the kind of opening set that sends people to the merch table before the headliner has even appeared. It was an assured, likeable turn from an artist clearly on the way up.
Then KALEO arrived, and frontman Jökull Júlíusson — JJ — reminded everyone why this band can silence a room one moment and level it the next. His voice is the whole show: a bottomless, blues-soaked howl on the heavy numbers and a fragile, aching thing on the quiet ones. The set leaned into A/B and its biggest moments, from the strut of “No Good” to the delicate falsetto of “All the Pretty Girls” and the slow-burn gospel of “Broken Bones.”
The dynamics were the point all night. One minute the band was tearing through raw, distorted blues-rock; the next, JJ stood alone in a spotlight for the Icelandic-language “Vor í Vaglaskógi,” a hush so complete you could hear the balcony breathe. That push and pull — feral and tender, often inside the same song — is what has always set KALEO apart, and in a room built for acoustics it was more striking than ever.
Of course, it all built toward “Way Down We Go,” the smouldering hit that made them, and the theatre sang every word back as though a decade of history were riding on it. By the time the last chord rang out, the anniversary framing felt almost beside the point: these songs are not nostalgia yet. They are still, unmistakably, alive.
