Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaustI first recall becoming aware of Sigur Rós after being struck by the 3 songs of theirs which featured on the soundtrack to Cameron Crowe's 2001 film Vanilla Sky. Those songs led me to immediately track down 1999's Ágætis byrjun (Icelandic for "An alright start"). I was very glad I did and the band have provided many hours of listening pleasure since then. Their name is taken from founder member Jón Birgisson's younger sister Sigurrós, who was born the same day as the band was formed in 1994. You could say Sigur Rós could translate as "Victory Rose" in English but the phrase wouldn't carry any meaning in Iceland and is grammatically incorrect.

The vocals on Ágætis byrjun are sung mainly in Icelandic, a language of which I have almost no understanding, so they just add to the already sumptuous orchestration on show rather than distracting from it in the way some English vocals tend to do. Their earlier music employed luxuriously long running times along with vast swells of post-rock noise. I have heard the music of their first 3 albums described as sounding like "glaciers drifting across the surface of the moon" and I cannot improve upon that as a mental image. The band is fronted by Jón "Jónsi" Þór Birgisson, whose use of a cello bow for playing guitar and liking for plenty of delay and reverb effects alongside his ethereal falsetto singing voice give the band their distinctive sound. One track on Ágætis byrjun, namely Olsen Olsen, introduced the listener to the gibberish language Vonlenska (or "Hopelandic" in tortured English) the band was to use exclusively on their () album in 2002. The language resembles Icelandic in the way it sounds but it is a constructed language of nonsense syllables and with there being no song titles, or indeed a title for the album, the listener was left to fill in their own meanings in the pages of the blank CD booklet supplied.

The band's music reached a very wide audience after their single Hoppípolla (taken from 2005's Takk...) was used in the title sequence of the BBC nature series Planet Earth in 2006. It was subsequently also used in BBC Sport's coverage of the 2006 Fifa World Cup and on various TV adverts. I can regularly pick out Sigur Rós tracks on random documentaries and TV series these days. Their music moved away from the minimalist other-worldly instrumentation of Ágætis byrjun and () with the release of the guitar-heavy Takk... and the increase in more conventional song structure continues with their new release Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, which translates as "With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly". There is one big difference between the new record and Takk..., apart from the absence of bowed, effects-laden, electric guitar and that's a completely different approach to production. Whereas () and Takk... belted out veritable walls of sound here there is a more delicate touch at play. The vastly experienced Flood (of U2, Smashing Pumpkins, Placebo, Depeche Mode, Goldfrapp and Nine Inch Nails audio engineer fame) takes up production duties on this Sigur Rós's fifth full-length album.

Actually, there's a second big difference between this and Takk... This album sounds fresh whereas Takk... sounded a little like a great band just going through the motions. Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust's first track, Gobbledigook, is like nothing Sigur Rós have released before. Upbeat, insistent drumming and playful acoustic guitar. Clocking in at just over 3 minutes it's also alarmingly short for a Sigur Rós track. There are, however, frequent returns to the Sigur Rós style of records past, strikingly so in the beautiful Fljótavík, but overall it seems that this is a definite change of direction for the band. That's no bad thing as they could easily have descended into the complacency that some portions of Takk... seemed to herald.

The second track, Inní mér syngur vitleysingur, continues with the upbeat, joyous feel of the opener before dropping the listener off into the soft acoustic beauty of Góðan daginn. Following the crashing post-rock crescendo of Festival, the second half of the album does move towards more familiar Sigur Rós soundscapes and there are even a couple of tracks which top the eight minute duration mark, which used to be almost mandatory for this band. After a couple of initially surprised listens to the album I'm now completely at ease with it and see it as being a shoo-in for my end-of-year top 10.

As a footnote I would say that if you are a fan of Sigur Rós, either new or long-standing, and have not had the good fortune to stumble upon their compatriots Múm, you should try to rectify that at your earliest convenience.
Written by Kevin
Monday, 29 September 2008
 
Dun Eidyn Digital Design, Edinburgh, Scotland
© 2009 Kevin Miller. All rights reserved.