Sigur Ros
“I think it’s safe to pronounce Sigus Ros the most pretentious band on the planet.” – Scott Floman
“(Something in Icelandic)” – Some Icelandic guy
Albums Reviewed:
Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust
Hailing
from
Onto their lineup, which will sound
goofy and weird because they’re all from
One more note: Icelandic has a bunch
of characters in its alphabet that simply aren’t in the regular English
alphabet: the “ash,” which is the thing where the a and e are connected; the
“eth,” which I believe is the thing that looks like a d with a cross on top;
and the “thorn,” which I believe is the thing that looks like the Greek theta
(and if you don’t know what that looks like, take a Greek class!). Despite the fact that I’ve taken three
linguistics classes where these characters are used, I still might have mixed
up the “eth” and “thorn” (I’m not sure), but, in any case, Icelandic has both
of these. Or maybe just the d with the
cross on top, I know it has that.
Anyway, since I’m not about to use “insert-symbol” for this crap, some
of the album and song titles typed out on this page are not 100% accurate. They’re just reasonable modern English
alphabet facsimiles. For instance, Agaetis Byrjun has an ash in it, but I typed both “a” and “e,” and I believe “Vidrar
Vel Til Loftarasa” has the d with the cross in it where I just typed a
“d.” If you have a problem with this and
would like to flame me about it, I welcome any and all flames. BRING IT ON, BEEEEEE-ATCH!
And, onto the reviews!
Von (1997)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Von”
As an introduction here, let me say I love the All Music Guide quote at the beginning of their review for this album: “The heaps of praise during 2000 surrounding 1999's Agaetis Byrjun brought surprisingly little attention to Sigur Rós' first record, released in 1997.” I love this quote because I find it hilarious, I find it hilarious because the word “surprisingly” is so ridiculously stupid and out-of-place, and the word “surprisingly” is so ridiculously stupid and out-of-place because THIS ALBUM ISN’T VERY GOOD AT ALL!!!! The review goes onto say something about this album being “just as adventurous” as Agaetis Byrjun or some such nonsense, and that’s only half-true, because this album is about fifty-bazillion times MORE “adventurous” than Agaetis. But, see, the reason that Agaetis is so damn good is not because it’s so “adventurous” or whatever (though it is, plenty), but because it contains so much goddamn supremely gorgeous, absolutely beautiful music. And that’s where this album is lacking. Not just in beautiful music, but in music, period. As a soundtrack to some creepy, artsy, suspense-horror film, a lot of this record would work QUITE nicely, but as an actual album, which is supposed to be judged on music, it fails. BECAUSE THERE’S LIKE FIFTEEN MINUTES OF MUSIC ON THE WHOLE DAMN THING!!!
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I do admire the atmosphere the band is able to create on a lot of this record. The opener, “Sigur Ros,” scares the living shit out of me, with its creepy noises and unsettling, far-off screaming. But it then proceeds to milk this cow for TEN MINUTES!!! With nothing besides atmospheric noise! I mean, yeah, like I said, it’s cool atmospheric noise, but, fuck my ass, give me some songs! You know how many songs I count on this album? On a generous day, I count four, and on a dickwad day, I count TWO. What are these songs, you ask? Well, “Hun Joro…” is the first actual music we get (at track 3, about fifteen minutes into the album, by the way), and I support the sort of echoey church choir vocals on top of fuzzy feedback guitar noise thing going on, but I DON’T support the fact that the song drags on aimlessly for like six goddamn minutes until it becomes interesting at the end again, when some people start laughing maniacally in my headphones and the whole song collapses into tape-loop fuck-up hell (which is really cool, by the way). I THOROUGHLY enjoy the title track, and I’d better, since it’s the only “pretty song” on the record (notable because the band’s ENTIRE next record consists of “pretty songs”). It’s very minimalist. Just some bongo-sounding drums, periodic and barely even aural acoustic plucking, some kind of synth or guitar feedback noise thing, and the ONLY ACTUAL VOCAL MELODY ON THE ENTIRE GODDAMN ALBUM from my boy Jon Thor. It’s very pretty. Would it be the weakest song on the entire next album? If you throw out “Intro” and “Avalon,” yes, most likely. But pretty song nonetheless.
“Myrkur” and “Syndir Guos (Opinberun Frelsarans)” might be songs, too, but it depends on my mood whether I classify them as such. “Myrkur” does basically the same choir vocals/guitar noise thing as “Hun Joro…,” but in much less interesting fashion because most of the song doesn’t actually have any vocals. Then “Syndir Guos (Opinberun Frelsarans)” has a neat bassline going on, and it clearly has vocals, but I still can’t decide whether those vocals are meant to enunciate a melody or just be random pretty flowering on top of the bassline and bowed feedback stuff. I’d wager they’re a melody, but I’m in a good mood today. I do like the whispering Jonny does in there. Hey! This is sort of pretty too, but it’s too atmospheric and non-musical to be much more than background music.
JUST LIKE THE REST OF THIS ALBUM! See, after those four tracks, if you’re looking for actual music and not “sort of scary background noise musak,” you’re out of luck, Chuck. That said, I really do admire the atmosphere the band creates on “Sigur Ros” and “Dogun” and what have you, and the album never really strikes me as bad. It just strikes me as “not actually music,” and there’s not enough “actual music” on the record to warrant a rating higher than a 5, even if I am genuinely frightened from time to time. Not on “Hafsol,” though. That track (notice I didn’t say “song,” but “track”) blows goats. Twelve and a half minutes of absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. It might even have less than “18 Sekundur Fyrir Solaruppras,” which is just 18 seconds of COMPLETE AND TOTAL SILENCE, and is probably the most pretentious thing I’ve ever seen, heard, tasted, smelled, or fucked in the ass on a record. “Leit Af Lifi,” “Verold Ny Og Oo,” and “Mistur” are each just two or three minutes of a few admittedly-neat sound effects, and “Rukrym” is six minutes of silence before a recording of someone putting “Myrkur” through a shredder. Or something. Is it backwards? I dunno. It’s sort of neat, I guess. But playing something backwards that might not even be a song in the first place is really nothing to get excited about.
This album
annoys me. The band clearly is capable
of beauty and good songs and whatnot (and the proof would come two years
later…OHHHHH, would it…), but I feel like, on this album, they just want to be
the most fucking pretentious band in the world and fill an album with strange,
scary atmospheric tracks that go NOWHERE for nine or ten minutes instead of
creating real music anyone would ever want to hear. I admire the atmosphere. I admire the talent. I admire the sheer amibition it took
to make something as un-musical as this your goddamn debut album (no way
in HELL would this band have ever been signed had they been from the United
States of Useless Terror Alert Systems instead of Iceland). I don’t admire the album, however. Because it bores the fucking crap out of me. Except for “Von” and the last minute of “Hun
Joro…” when the tape goes nutballs. Not
that I think you could ever get a hard copy of this album outside of
Agaetis Byrjun (1999)
Rating: 9
Best Song: “Olsen Olsen”
The
reason you might have heard of this band, and the reason I’ve actually bothered
to do a page for them, is this album, and this album alone. You don’t normally get piles and piles of
fellatio-esque press from American and British music journalists if you’re from
The main reason this album is so good, before you even get to the fact that they bothered to WRITE SONGS this time around, is that the band adds SO MUCH to their sound from the debut, which was just drums, bass, guitar noise, and sound effects. They’re using pianos here. They’re using other keyboards. They’re carting in entire horn sections. They’re carting in entire string sections. And they’re not just giving them boring parts to play in the background of some bullshit ballad (hello, 90% of crappy rock bands who’ve ever written a ballad to get on MTV). No, see, they’re writing ENTIRE, FULLY-DEVELOPED MELODY LINES for all these fun extra instruments, then inserting these melody lines in clever, interesting, unexpected places throughout the songs (“Staralfur,” “Olsen Olsen,”), or making one of the most gorgeous piano parts I’ve ever heard in life the entire basis for a song (“Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa”), or just letting the horns go absolutely fucknuts at the end a-la Radiohead’s “The National Anthem” (“Ny Batteri,” and, remember, this album was released before Kid A). It’s all just superb stuff. Sure, it’s all fucking sloth-slow, so no 10 or anything, but it’s just SUPERB STUFF.
Every song by itself contains more musical ideas than their entire last album. Seriously. The only one that kinda bores me is “Svefn-G-Englar,” which has too little going on musically to justify going on for ten minutes, but the background keyboard and the vocal melody (it sounds like Jon is singing “Ichiro!” “ICHIIROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” It’s cool.) still make the song worthwhile. “Flugufrelsarinn” doesn’t have all that much going on either, to be honest, but this is the only song on the album that doesn’t HAVE to, because the singing and vocal parts are so damn good. I love the violin line in “Staralfur,” and I love even MORE how it suddenly vanishes and leaves Jon alone with this softly-mixed acoustic guitar for some more beautiful singing. BRILLIANT! The almost-marching instrumental melody line in “Olsen Olsen” is the best damn thing on the record, and I adore the buildup. A flute plays it first, but by the end you’ve got strings, horns, and a choir belting this thing out all in unison, and it gives me fucking goosebumps. The song is absolutely 110% splurgetastic, even if it uses the same baseline as was in “Syndir Guos (Obinperun Frelsarans)” from the last album. I already mentioned the horn blow-up in “Ny Batteri.” Great buildup in that song, too. “Hjartao Hamast (Bamm Bamm Bamm)” actually opens with this super-catchy keyboard line that GROOVES! For about thirty seconds, SIGUR FUCKING ROS, whose music is only one or two steps removed from a funeral march, has a GROOVE going on! Sure, it goes away, but the song morphs! And stays interesting! No milking one musical idea for eight minutes here, no sirree! And if you do, it might as well be the piano melody from “Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa” or the quiet, acoustic vibe of the title track! Because both of those songs RULE!
I really love this album. Unlike their other two albums, the songs actually have multiple parts! They GO places! They’re INTERESTING! Ofcourse, long stretches of this record are incredibly gorgeous, but so are long stretches of their next album. The difference between the two is that, on this album, they actually pack eight or nine-minute songs with eight or nine minutes worth of musical ideas. Melodies galore, both vocal and instrumental, popping up unexpectedly all over the place. Nearly unmatched beauty. Cool guitar noise too. They didn’t lose that. Just added like 50 other things to it. I thoroughly recommend this album to ANYONE with musical tastes that lie ANYWHERE outside bullshit pop Top 40 crap. Just a brilliant, gorgeous album. No 10, though. Too fucking slow.
( ) (2002)
Rating: 7
Best Song: Um, the 8th one
First, let me say that, had there been any lingering doubts about the truthfulness of Scott Floman’s statement I quoted at the top of this page, this record wipes them away. COMPLETELY wipes them away. I don’t know if they had been doing this all along, but between the release of Agaetis and this one, the band went on record as claiming to write their lyrics in a FICTIONAL LANGUAGE called “Hopelandic” (or is it “Hopelandish?” Fuck me if I know). Add to that the title of this record (IT’S A PUNCTUATION MARK!!!!!) and the titles of the songs on the record (wait…THE SONGS ON THIS RECORD HAVE NO TITLES!!!!!!), and you have this: a band that writes their lyrics in a language that doesn’t exist, title their albums after punctuation marks, and REFUSE TO TITLE THEIR SONGS AT ALL! Now, admittedly, this last part makes my job here a bit easier (try typing out “Syndir Guos (Opinberun Frelsarans)” or “Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa”), but, nevertheless, THIS IS CLEARLY THE MOST PRETENTIOUS BAND IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE. They make E.L.P. look like fucking Weird Al Yankovic.
And, to go along with that pretention, like their first album, they’ve again neglected to pack their music with enough interesting trappings to make it too worthwhile to any listeners beyond themselves. I mean, this album actually is quite good, as opposed to Von, but it’s also nearly as boring. The difference is that they’ve kept the beauty of Agaetis, but lost the interesting-ness, whereas Von had neither. They kept the pianos and keyboards and whatnot from their superb second album, also, but they’ve ditched the strings and horns and choirs and interesting melody lines that pop up halfway into the songs. Most of the tracks on here just feel like the band came up with ONE musical idea in studio, played it for eight or nine minutes, then added pretty atmospherics around it. This is better than Von, which would often build equal-length tracks around atmospherics and NO musical ideas, but it’s still frustrating as HELL, especially knowing what this band’s capable of when they make the effort.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that loooooooong stretches of this album are gorgeous beyond words, though. The third track bases a six-minute song on like a four-note piano trill melody repeated 5,000 times, and there aren’t even any lyrics, but, goshdarnit, it’s PRETTY!!! And so is the first track, though that really doesn’t have anything going on beyond some pretty Kid-A-sounding keyboard chords. The second track bases its entire self around a drum rhythm that’s not interesting at ALL, however. See, this is what I mean. You can’t take one two-second musical idea, repeat it for seven minutes, add some backing keyboards or bowed guitar noise, sing like two lines in your little fictional language, and call it a song. CAN’T FUCKING DO IT!!! Sure, the end of the fourth track here has a neat little piano part that pops up out of nowhere for about twenty seconds, and then the track ends with just Jon singing for a little bit (gorgeous, ofcourse…but then they repeat this trick on the seventh track), and the last few minutes of the fifth track remind me a LOT of some of the instrumental passages from Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” (and, therefore, are neat), but these are the EXCEPTIONS. This album bores me to death, even if it is gorgeous, and the pretentious nature of this band, the fact that they think they can just base ten minutes around one five-second idea repeated 6,000 times because THEY THOUGHT OF IT, SO IT MUST BE GOOD, AND IT DOESN’T NEED ANYTHING ELSE ADDED TO IT, is starting to annoy me a bit.
There is one GLARING exception, though, to both the bad of the album (monotonousness) and the good (incredible beauty despite this monotonousness), which causes me to give this record a strong 7 despite lambasting most of it (because I’ll take interesting over beautiful but really boring any day of the week), and that is the eighth and last track here. You know what? It ROCKS. No, I’m dead serious. Sigur Ros ROCKS THE HOUSE DOWN on track number 8. It starts off with a guitar intro (and Jon is playing actual notes on the guitar, instead of running a bow over it for no good reason), it contains the best vocal melody on the album (I’d like to comment here that “Hopelandic” sounds like it has about five words in its entire vocabulary…it sounds like Jon is singing the same thing in every goddamn song (at least the ones where there’s any singing). This is annoying.), and, over the course of its twelve minutes, it builds, and builds, and builds, until the drum rhythm absolutely POUNDS you into submission. The last two minutes of this song are absolutely orgasmic, and the tune is, without question, the best Sigur Ros has ever done. And it’s not even pretty! It RAWWWWWWWWKS! It’s awesome. I wish I knew what its title was, though. YOU trying searching for “untitled 8 ( )” on Kazaa. Doesn’t work. Just doesn’t fucking work.
That song aside, though, just like Von, this record frustrates me. They both make it seem like Sigur Ros is way too into early Pink Floyd. Von sounds like the band is trying to imitate “A Saucerful of Secrets” (the song, not the album…that record has some neat songs on it) and the live half of Ummagumma, but failing, because they’re not Pink Floyd. Then large chunks of this record sound a lot like the most boring parts of “Echoes” or “Atom Heart Mother” or the closing “jam” part of “Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast” or something. I really don’t know whether Agaetis Byrjun was an anomaly or not. I hope it wasn’t. If album number #4 (titled ; or some shit, probably) comes out in a year or two, and it’s just as boring as this one, I might give up on this band. They’re clearly capable of brilliance. The question is whether they want to stop being pretentious wankers long enough to actually create it. We’ll know soon enough, I guess.
Nick
Collings (crawlaway@lycos.co.uk) writes:
Hello Brad, hav to disagree with you on Sigur Ros's third
album - I think it's better than you make it out to
be. When I read your review, I expected to be disappointed when listening to (
) but found the more
minimalisic and sparse sound to be equal to the stunning Agaetis Byrjun.
I only bought these two Sigur Ros records because of all the acclaim they
received as well as being
described as a totally unique sound. So I duly took the risk and it paid off.
Don't think I'll bother with Von
though as it's not as high standard as what followed.
Regards
- Nick @ Alt-Rock Review –
Joakim Fracht
(jfracht@o2.pl) writes:
Frigid greetings;
First of all, the word you use in the last sentence of the first paragraph in the
review is spelt "pretension".
Now, for the critique - be attentive. "Pretension" is a phony term
coined by rebellious philistines that those capable of *thinking* before
reacting can see through effortlessly. I'm very deploring of the fact you
belong to the former group. How you managed to enter Harvard, or any university
for that matter, is beyond me.
A thesaurus that I have defines the word as "the quality of being
pretentious (creating a false appearance of great importance or worth)",
while pioneering post-modern thought taught us that appearances, even the
concept of existence - are relative.
See the connection? No? Let me spell it out for you.
In context, the concept of "relativity" may mean - and thus means -
solipsism. This means that not only the "opinion" I am going to refer
to is solipsistic, but that in light of the Probability Theory, it is fixated
as fatalistic in that it is bound happen at some point in time.
The immense mathematical probability (and inevitability) of this entails us with
that it already may have happened and smoothly leads me into statistics. The
below paragraph shall not, however, attempt to calculate said mathematical
probabilities but instead show how the dreadful term loses it's meaning despite
them - and yet under logic.
Let's assume that the now-figurative Sigur Ros has three hundred thousand
(300,000) fans worldwide. Now, let's assume that there is a single person among
them who understands, for instance, the (etymological) neolinguism as necessary
to the internal cohesion of the work it is employed on, and also that the
employment of a conventional language would mean that said work would
substantially differ in level of abstraction. Finally, assume that this person
believes that cohesion and abstraction mark great artworks and perhaps a
visionary (and by proxy genius) approach to aspects of life, in light of the
Probability Theory again (which the fan also believes in) - possibly the whole
of life.
To that soul, the catcalls of "pretentious!" make no sense as he or
she sees the band as illuminati whose behavior and output are potentially, and
thus ultimately, beneficially life-changing and any difference might have
stripped their work of this quality.
Which leads us to the concluding of this point: I do not mean that the term is
bogus because it can not connect to everyone - it is bogus because it
presumptously disregards that message, idea or appearance may be influential to
a degree of zeal - which leads to them being hermetically important. Consider
the Bible, "E=MC2" and counterculturals who choose to still don their
fashion and mannerisms when threatened with street violence from antagonistic
parties.
My harangue-that-is-not shall end by the pellucidification of point numero uno:
respect language. It is the only means of projecting yourself in your
self-imposed role of a music reviewer, and misbehavior might (and thus has!)
result in the crumbling of your soundness as an animaton.
...
I hope you didn't buy that I really believe this self-contradicting nonsense
since that'd make you a complete loggerhead. (Hope you didn't buy that I would
patronize a Harvard student like that without a hint of irony, too - you know
why.)
By the way of loggerheads - there is a great 1974 album by German Krautrock
band Sand which has a song called "Old Loggerhead". The album is
titled "Golem" but the lavish, expanded 1996 re-release (conducted by
David Tibet, of all people) was renamed to "Ultrasonic Seraphim".
Both are deleted as of 2004, but I think you will find 'em worthy of sharing
shelves with your encyclopaedic foreign-swamp-core / avant-noise-jazz
collection.
Almost forgot the selling point - the album/s include the track "May
Rain", which was famously covered by Current 93 on their seminal 1992 LP,
"Thunder Perfect Mind".
Joakim Fracht
Department of Sociology,
PS.
Kazaa is not enough to find those records, I'm afraid. Google for
"Soulseek" and use that
Guðmundur Hallvarðsson (g.hallv@centrum.is) writes:
Track number 8 on this album is known as
“Popplagið” or “The Pop Song”.
And I agree that this song rocks my socks!!
They usually use it to end concerts, leaving the audience absolutely stunned.
Takk… (2005)
Rating: 8
Best Song:
“Hoppipolla”
And so Sigur Ros, ever so carefully, begin to come down to Earth. And I don’t say this necessarily because Takk… (which will from here on out be referred to without the “…”…actually, it just won’t be referred to) sounds any less otherworldly or ethereal than their previous albums (though occasionally it does). I say this because, well, look at the title! It’s a real word, for god sakes. No more punctuation marks. And the songs have titles again. Sure, they’re things like “Glosoli” and “Seaglopur” and “Andvari” and not “Pain” or “Psychiatric Explorations of the Fetus with Needles,” but at least they’re there. And I can also say for certain that, for the first time, I can occasionally make out a few of the lyrics Jon Thor is singing, or at least when he sings the title of the song (as he does clearly in “Hoppipolla” and “Heysatan”). The band says this is the first album of theirs with lyrics Icelandic instead of Hopelandic, too, so that’s always a plus. Fictional languages are fucktarted. Might as well sing in Elvish or Klingon or French.
So, yes, Sigur Ros take preliminary steps here towards acting like a semi-normal band, but they’re still Sigus Ros, so if you’re expecting fast-paced emo-rock from these guys, you are sadly mistaken. The songs are slow, long, sometimes underdeveloped, and often inconceivably gorgeous. I will applaud how the band has decided to write an album full of songs this time, as well, instead of an album full of slow piano lines masquerading as songs (the parentheses one) or an album full of horror movie mood music (Von). The material is not as varied, interesting, or fully-developed as Agaetis Byrjun, ofcourse, but who was really expecting that? That album’s like a once-a-decade thing. I have not met a single person who has heard that record and does not absolutely adore it, and the only reason I didn’t give it a 10 is because I’m retarted and I have ADD. So the random horn and piano lines popping up six minutes into an eight-minute song and owning your life are still not back, but you know what is back? Song development! Layering! More than one theme per 10-minute atmospheric string extravaganza! Good times.
See, the complaints I wrote about the pretentious “we thought up this 4-note piano line, so, because we’re gods, let’s play it 500 times, layer a synth over it, and call it a song, only not title it because we’re dicks” thoughts surrounding ( ) were apparently read and internalized by the band, because while the songs are still obviously built around a few repeated themes, these themes are not driven into the ground like on Sigur Ros’ previous effort, and instead are given room to breathe and develop. Sometimes this means they’re just layered to all get-out, and sometimes this means they morph into something else halfway through, but in nearly every song something of that nature happens, and it’s nice to hear. The two best songs, and the two first real tracks (leaving out one-minute title track as an intro of sorts), are the best examples of this. Marvel at how the slow bass line and insistent marching beat of “Glosoli” grow and grow until they’re enveloped by guitar riffing so loud, so fuzzy, so full of feedback, and so crushing that to know it comes from Sigur Ros is something very surprising indeed. Marvel also at how a simple piano line that would have been left alone to rot on ( ) is added to and layered with strings and horns and perfectly gorgeous vocal melodies so expertly that “Hoppipolla” is now my favorite Sigur Ros song ever. If someone wanted to know what made Sigur Ros so great, this is where I’d direct them. And it’s over in a tidy four minutes, as well, so Tiffany Retard Top-40 Fan can actually enjoy it along with snobs like myself. Very good times.
After these two tracks, the album unfortunately becomes a bit samey and predictable (actually more so than ( ), which at least had variety), and if you can remember what some of the more happy-sounding tracks filled with lush strings on Agaetis Byrjun sounded like, and then you adjust for a slight but still noticeable drop in quality, you know what the rest of this bad boy is bringing to the table. Lots of piano lines, lots of strings, lots of horns, and even lots of glockenspiels and other mallet-beaten instruments, as in the opening few minutes of “Se Lest.” To say the rest of this record is one long string arrangement would be inaccurate, since parts of “Seaglopur” actually break out the heaviness nicely (though this time piano and synth-driven, not heavenly crushing feedback-driven), and the swirling piano/vocal melody in “Se Lest” is something to behold. Hell, “Gong” doesn’t even sound like Sigur Ros. It sounds like moody indie-rock! After a string intro, Jon actually plucks his guitar instead of slamming it with a violin bow, the percussion works up a nice little sweat, and if you layered some earnest-sounding English vocals in there instead of the creepy falsetto Icelandic crooning you could get them on tour with Longwave or something. Love the sudden keyboard break, too. What a nicely-written, conventional song! Very very good times.
Ofcourse, “Milano” is a fairly uneventful ten minutes of fits and starts, and I can’t tell you all that much about the closing trio of “Andvari,” “Svo Hljott,” and “Heysatan” beyond “golly, they’re sure purty,” and therein lies the reason for the 8 rating and recommendation to go listen to Agaetis Byrjun I’m gonna continue to lay on everyone I meet. Is this album good? Ofcourse. Is it very good. Sure, why not. Is it great? No. Agaetis Byrjun still stands alone as Sigur Ros’ defining masterpiece, and this album, no matter how insanely gorgeous from start to finish (because it’s Sigur Ros and that’s what they do), and no matter how much better than ( ) (and it is a relative return to form), is not gonna do anything to change that. As a happier, string-laden prototypical Sigur Ros record, though, this thing is A-OK. Reemember, a “prototypical Sigur Ros record” still sounds like nothing else.
Hvarf/Heim (2007)
Rating: 8
Best Song:
“Hjomalind”
Nice little tide-me-over until
the next full-fledged record from our intrepid extraterrestrials who claim to
be from
Anyway, back to the record at hand. It sounds like Sigur Ros. Since Sigur Ros is one of the most consistently gorgeous bands in the world and since they haven’t lost their fastball yet, it’s good. The rarity tracks are long and meandering but still oh so nice in that Sigur Ros way. Several work up some aggression via tasty bowed guitar shenanigans. Both of the ten-minute ones have a giant, cathartic crescendo at the end that totally works, including the horns/strings/feedback clusterfuck in “Hafsol.” My favorite is “Hjomalind” because the drums and bass work up a nice lather (not all that common in Sigur Ros music) and the BIG keyboard chorus blasts are devastatingly effective. I’m nominating it as best song because the acoustic live tracks of songs I’ve heard before don’t really surprise me at all, so I’m giving points for newness even though “Staralfur” (which I fucking love) is on here. Plus, outside of “Staralfur,” the choices on the second EP seem geared toward Sigur Ros songs I like instead of Sigur Ros songs I love. There’s two from ( ), for instance (or perhaps three?), which I can tell because I don’t recognize the song titles. “Agaetis Byrjun” was one of the least amazing songs on the album of the same name, and I kind of skimmed over “Heysatan” in my Takk… review because it’s not as good as, say, “Hoppipolla” or just about anything on Agaetis Byrjun. It’s all insanely gorgeous, though. That probably shouldn’t come as a surprise.
So yes, like I said at the beginning, nice little tide-me-over. Nothing more, nothing less. What else can I say? It sounds like Sigur Ros.
Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust (2008)
Rating: 7
Best Song: “Gobbledigook”
Points off for a really long Icelandic title that forced me to break out the “insert-symbol” for the first time ever on this website just to correctly spell said title out for you above. I should also let you know right now that I have no intention whatsoever of doing this in the review itself, so if I feel the need to discuss a song whose title contains an “eth,” I’m typing a “d” and forcing you to deal with the fact that the titles of some of the songs in this review are phonetically incorrect. If you can’t deal with that, you might as well stop reading right now. I have no patience for your kind.
Anyway, the not amazingly high rating above has nothing to do with this annoying development. Nope, it’s there because this is easily the most perfunctory album Sigur Ros have ever produced. It’s like they’re starting to become bored by the established “Sigur Ros round,” and on much of the material presented herein seem to have lost much of their, you know, “spark.” This is not true of the entire album, and when they attempt to break out of their self-imposed “pretty” straitjacket, the results are occasionally very strong. The lead single and opener “Gobbledigook,” for instance, is fantastic and sounds absolutely nothing like Sigur Ros as we’ve all come to know them over the last decade (shit, has it really been that long?). It’s fast, it’s hectic, it’s screwey, there are pounding tribal drums and acoustic guitars doing interesting, slightly jarring things completely off the beat and vocals are coming in and out from all directions and generally confusing the listener. It is not at all pleasant to listen to. It’s far and away the best song on the album. The 52 minutes after it sound nothing like it. This is a problem.
The reason I said that it seems like the band is becoming bored with themselves is that a lot of this album is boring. Once I get into its second half it literally starts to bore me, and heretofore this was not something I experienced with Sigur Ros. Sure, the parentheses album bored me at times, but that was because of its tendency to play two piano notes for eight minutes and call it a song. It wasn’t boring in that special “perfunctory” way that this one is. I even listened to Agaetis again this week (to see if I was just getting tired of Sigur Ros in general) and was as captivated as ever, so I know it’s not my need for breakneck riffs and blistering solos. This record just doesn’t have “it,” you know? It’s got plenty of nice material, like the jumpy Sigur Ros-meets-AM-pop “Immi Mer Syngur Vitleysingur” (I should also mention you won’t be seeing any accents anywhere near this review either) and the nice, building crescendos of “Vid Spilum Endalaust,” but I would be remiss if I didn’t note that neither of these songs sounds a damn thing like Agaetis or the parentheses one. They’re too fast and happy and jumpy. They sound like a lot of Takk…, actually (at least if I remember correctly what Takk… sounded like outside of “Hoppipolla”). Big and huge and layered (Strings! Horns! Wailing vocals! Stuff you play with mallets!) and very pleasant-sounding, but not too much more than that. These tunes do not make you feel like you’re slowly drifting through a field of glaciers or floating in outer space. Normally this isn’t really a big deal (Dude, Van Halen sucks! I don’t feel like I’m drifting through a field of glaciers at all!!! Fuck this!!!!), but, you know, that’s what Agaetis and the best moments of the parentheses one made me (and others) feel like. Sigur Ros is earthbound now. That is not where they should be.
Occasionally they still try for the big, ball-busting extendo-track with the big “HUZZAH!!!” climax at the end, but this time neither of the attempts is anything special. “Festival” (A title in English! Fuck!) gives us four minutes of Jon Thor playing a few random chords on an organ and hitting the highest notes his vocal register is capable of before a thumping bass/tom thing comes in from nowhere. This is not the most effective “buildup” I have ever heard. Thankfully, as the tom begins to roll and the requisite Sigur Ros Instruments slowly come in, the band does show off a pretty effective buildup, and the last minute and a half or so are pretty balls…huuuuuge organ sound, blasting trumpets, hyperactive drumming, etc. Climax achieved, you know? It’s pretty “eh” for a Sigur Ros song, but it’s good enough. “Ara Batur,” however, isn’t so hot. This time the random tinkling organ is replaced by a random tinkling piano (for over six minutes!), and the standard Sigur Ros Instruments are replaced by an entire orchestra and an entire choir. The “buildup” consists of the strings and choir told to gradually play the same two notes louder and louder until the band tells them to stop. By the time they’re told to st…I’M SORRY, I HAVE TO START SHOUTING THIS REVIEW TO YOU! THE ABSURDLY LOUD MOVIE SOUNDTRACK SCHLOCK MUSIC BEHIND ME HAS MADE ME UNABLE TO HEAR MY OWN VOICE! IT’S ALSO MADE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO LISTEN TO THIS MOST LIKELY LOVELY SIGUR ROS TRACK! I’LL GET BACK TO YOU ONCE IT FINI…OH, WHAT? THAT’S STILL “ARA BATUR?” I’M SORRY, I DIDN’T KNOW! IT SOUNDED LIKE THE SCORE TO A POST-APOCALYPTIC KEVIN COSTNER EPIC! MY BAD! DEFINITELY MY BAD!
ANYW…oh, song just ended. Anyway, I do enjoy the hypnotic tom drums and piano trills of “Sud I Eyrum” and the quiet, acoustic “Illgressi.” Good songs both. After “Illgressi,” though, the album becomes so quiet and uneventful that its existence has yet to be confirmed on anything other than music blogs of questionable factual reliability, and thus I have little to say about the end of the album that doesn’t involve my snoring and/or drooling on your pillow (I habitually do one of those, but not the other; can you guess which one?). Except for “Illgressi,” all the slower, quieter stuff is just so mediocre and lackluster. When this album tries to sound like “pretty Sigur Ros,” it doesn’t work like it used to. Stuff like “Fljotavik” is just (here’s that word again!) perfunctory. For the most part, this album sounds good when it tries more interesting, weirder and/or darker stuff (“Gobbledigook,” “Sud I Eyrum”) or at least when it tries to sound jumpy and happy (“Immi Mer Syngur Vitleysingur”), and not when it tries to sound somewhat like Sigur Ros seems to think they should sound like and are now (as I believe) totally bored of sounding like (slow, pretty, etc.). I don’t even like “Festival” all that much, really. I just think it’s at least respectable compared to the shitstorm that is “Ara Batur.” And “Illgressi” is really more “pleasant” than anything. It’s not gonna light anyone’s soul on fire. This is a nice album and quite a decent listen, but if it wasn’t clear by now that Sigur Ros aren’t gonna make something like Agaetis Byrjun again unless they completely change their style, this record should make that obvious.