With A Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly
June 27th, 2008
I imagine the title of the new Sigur Rós album to be an allusion to the climatic endings to their concerts. The example would be their Reykjavík concert at the end of Hvarf / Heim, where ‘Popplagið’–the ‘pop song’–thunders behind a pyrotechnic light show on canvas. They walk off stage leaving the amplifiers ringing in the background. Watching from home, lead singer Jónsi’s grandmother thought that there was something wrong with her television.
If I had to sum the album up in a word, it would be ‘festival’, the English name given to one of their songs. With their previous albums, Takk…, Svigaplatan (( )) and ágætis byrjun, you could follow the melody from one song to the next, with við spilum endalaust it sounds more like a collection of singles, or songs for a festival. Possibly this is because of the distinctive start of ‘Gobbledigook’ and ‘Inní mér syngur vitleysingur’. The translation of the former, ‘Within Me a Lunatic Sings’, explains all. They’re both very happy summer-festival type songs, which came as a surprise, but I found it a nice one.
With ‘Góðan daginn’ the familiar soaring vocals are back, but the summer influence remains and they mingle at warm airy heights, a complete contrast to the beginning of the frozen ágætis byrjun. I’m not the best judge regarding Icelandic lyrics, but ‘Við spilum endalaust’ seems to establish this album as one of their more understandable albums. In all of the previous albums several songs consist entirely of “hopelandic”, or gibberish, and Jónsi’s voice simply acts as another instrument. Svigaplatan in particular consists entirely of this.
‘Ára bátur’, to use the album notes, was ‘recorded live at Abbey Road studios with the London Sinfonietta and the choristers of the London Oratory School’. The climax to this song doesn’t come with a cello-bow being dragged over an electric guitar (it’s an amazing sound) as used in the previous albums, but with a choir harmonising with Jónsi and an orchestra of 90 with strings, symbols and trumpets; sort of Sigur Rós-meets-Hollywood-motion-picture. If you ignore the Hollywood motion picture feeling, it’s a moving climax to the album.
The final songs return to melancholy, or as I like to think, walking back from a festival with the music still buzzing in your ears. I found the final track ‘All Alright’ very strange to listen to–the lyrics being in English. Having a translation to certain songs such as ‘Viðrar vel til loftárása’ adds a lot, but before finding out what it ‘meant’, I had listened to it for months with my own meaning, a meaning that still remains alongside the translation. It’s an interesting move and has caught many fans off-guard from looking at Last.fm. Altogether I’d say that the album is a good start for a mainstream audience which they have now accumulated. If this is your first album, then buy their back-catalogue and you’ll find this is just the most recent of a string of magical sounding albums.