As an aspiring pop star in the sepia-tinged days before the World Wide Web, homemade goody bags were my calling card. These were A5 packets crafted on the sly at my office temp job, covered in photo booth headshots and filled with candy, plastic toys, and ta-dah: my cassette demo tape.
Surely jaded A&R bods would be charmed by my tricks and treats, captivated by my musical provocations, then sign me on the spot. But any whiff of rock stardom would have to wait several more decades until I got my break this year fronting the Iggy/Bowie/Sex Pistols/Blondie spin-off band Lust For Life on a UK tour, when I belatedly delivered on the promise of my shonky goody bag.
I was reminded of my craftsy bribery when I received a package from Icelandic perfume house Fischersund. The brown paper and twine wrapping conveyed such beguiling mystery that it sat undisturbed as a objet d’art for months. Finally succumbing, I opened it to find tricks and treats: a box filled with meadow weeds, incense cones, a cotton bandana printed with artwork and poetry, and a bottle of Fischersund No. 101.
A QR code lead me online to an echoey lullaby. All the moving parts started to feel needlessly busy, but fortunately the perfume itself is properly distinctive. Billed as a Reykjavík backyard in the summer, it’s a freshy flowerpots’n’cigarette butts thing, fleshed out with dusty, aromatic angelica, bitter blackcurrant, and grass giving up its green to the bright white nights. A beautiful bribe.
