Here is a "first impressions" review of the new Sigur Ros album, written by a man whose taste in music I highly respect.I have caved in, ordered the special edition and got the download...this is my report as I listen to this right now.
Gobbledigook: I still cannot make out why I don't quite like this track. It's clever with its counter-rhythms and neat little yelp in the chorus and the layers of la-la-la-vocals in the background...perhaps not enough of a hook to grab me.
Inní mér syngur vitleysingur For one second it sounds like the band strikes up Go Now...standard bits of SR-ingedients (glockenspiel, a mournful string and brass arrangement underneath, the bum bum-drumsound filling every nook and cranny up in this track...it's bloody effective. Jonsi's vocals seem not so dominantly eerie as on previous albums...perhaps he is singing true lyrics rather than vocalise? It's stuffed to the happy climax all the way through. A happy album, is it possible?
Góðan daginn ...and this is where the melancholy kicks in and I'm a sucker for these things. That stringed bow-guitarsound wafts eeriliy through this acoustic track and a dreamy vocal compliments this lullaby of a song...like Eno or Zazou at their most ambient. And again, like on previous albums there's an undercutrrent of sounds working here...a stream of bright electronics, glockenspiel and bass tugging you under. Magnificent.
Við spilum endalaust As close to a hitsingle they'll ever get. Nice-landic stomp built around crescending brass and strings towards the end.
Festival. The elegaic organ-like intro tells me enough. This is starting as Sigur Ros's version of Ave Maria before the band kicks in and stretches it heavenward with pounding bass as the vine into the clouds creating a passage for so many different strands of instruments and vocals to climb up there....this is why I love this band so much. It reaches for those highpoints with overwrought bombastic tendencies but the melodies are so heartbreakingly gorgeous you cannot help but to be immersed in them. A soulcleanser of a track. And they have written many like those.
Suð í eyrum Built around simple piano motifs this song is a fairly standard Ros-track with rolling percussion and layer upon layer of electronic strings...and again I'm wrapped in its cocoon of warm fuzzy harmonics. Jonsi's voice never overstates his welcome anywhere on the album- the parallells with whalesong are definitely out of the window. Again, beautiful.
ára bátur As far as melodies go, this one is the purest. Simple piano chords, gorgeous vocal line and very gentle strings and the voices of a boys' choir drifting underneath...it dares not to trespass the fragile mood created here. It's like a farewell scene out of a movie graced with a elegant and sublime soundtrack. Words fail me, I'm sitting with goosebumps listening to this and when this song lead up to the inevitable crescendo in sound I actually think that this song would have been better if it had stayed low-key to the end...so 7 minutes of phenomenal music.
Illgresi There's a variety of ballads on this album to counter-act the massive songs filling the grooves here. This is almost so light it floats away on its acoustic guitar-strumming and towards the end I'm humminh the tune to Bryan Adams' Heaven...no, not my favourite.
Fljótavík The idea of a happy album by now has been shelved- this is definitely like the culmination of the Sigur Ros-sound in symphonic ballads. The band generate enough layers to put the London Symphonic Orchestra to shame in overall sound- this ballad another clear example of this. It feels though a slight bit like I'm eating a very richly decorated sweet cake...the sugar is overabundant in this track too.
Straumnes A slow instrumental out of the Sylvian/Eno/name here your favourite ambient artist-handbook. An Ending?
All Alright...and when the water cascades around me at the start of this track I feel like a bit of an upbeat ending...the band don't let me down, they screw the tempo even further back with a barrage of brass piled on top of a piano-riff, finalising this album almost in the same vein they ended Takk...this one is reminiscent of David Sylvian's Let the Happiness In with dense trumpets pushing the vocal higher...top class melancholia.
This album belies the happy, free nature of the single Gobbledigook and perhaps doesn't do the pre-press justice in regards to the sound- more earthy, less constraint. I fact, Sigur Ros continues from Takk in the same vein but compresses their dense sound even further to a point where it almost becomes too much- invariably, it's when the band takes the sound back they are the most impressive (Festival, the opening of ára bátur, Góðan daginn...). Perhaps they needed to break the mould of the second part of the album more open with a few uptempo-tracks...as it is it is a beautiful album but too rich sometimes for its own good.
Review by MAARTS, 6.21.08 Reprinted by permission
No comments:
Post a Comment