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For some bands, the "just-the-facts" approach
isn't enough. Such is the case with Sigur Rós. The media
darlings of the moment, the Icelandic quartet have inspired an
unlikely domestic bidding war over their second full-length,
Ágætis Byrjun. Originally released in Iceland in
1999 (where it sold 16,000 copies — the per-capita equivalent of
16 times platinum, as CMJ has pointed out), the album was
picked up by the UK's fantastically eclectic FatCat label in 2000 and
finally released in the U.S. by MCA's new imprint PIAS-America. The
band's sprawling drone draws references to Godspeed You Black
Emperor!, not to mention ample comparisons to the Icelandic
landscape; they're fashionably "difficult," singing only in Icelandic
and "Hopelandish," a made-up tongue; they're endearingly skinny;
they've toured with Radiohead. Chances are you've read all that,
somewhere or another, sometime in the last few months. But try to
forget it. Go buy the album, drown out the noise of factoids, and
listen to it. Hard. Fortunately that won't be difficult,
because Ágætis Byrjun is one of the most
sublimely immersive albums to come along in ages (likewise Sigur
Rós' live performance, which recently turned San Francisco's
rock-relic Fillmore into a resonant chapel of sound). With the
sparsest of instrumentation — electric guitar, bass, drums, the
occasional organ, a string quartet and scads of delay — they
manage to create an all-encompassing sound, a rock core that flares
into a full-blown expanse of yearning, without, paradoxically enough,
lapsing into pretension. Like all great musicians, they've proved
themselves to be brilliant listeners. There's nothing patently
original here: the string work on "Flugufrelsarinn" recalls
This Mortal Coil's best moments; the delicate precision of the
group's approach is taken straight from Talk Talk's Laughing
Stock. Like any good drone band, they've doubtless put in their
time swaying in front of the speakers to Sonic Youth, My Bloody
Valentine, Magic Hour. They've even made some of their biggest hits
out of Finnish folk songs and funeral marches. What is it, then? An
early press release for the band drew guffaws for describing their
sound as "The sound of God weeping tears of gold in heaven" (which,
indeed, was a bit of PR hyperbole that should not go unpunished). But
there's something to it: it's transcendent stuff, truly Dionysian,
the kind of expansive sound that makes you want to sweep yourself
into the breach. Jonssi Birgisson's eerie falsetto, which curls
unsteadily around the notes like a lover's hand around another's
wrist, is simply uncanny — sexless, other-tongued, but familiar
as the voice inside your own head. Musically, the band achieves a
rare sort of Fourth World inclusiveness, the kind of global sound
Bill Laswell can only dream about. Their massive, rock-based drone
creates a vortex that sucks in all manner of sound — folk songs,
classical chamber music, electric blues, monster ballads, indigenous
piping, laptop chatter and ambient swirl. I could swear I even hear a
New Orleans parade in there somewhere. And that's it: it's bigger
than you are. It draws you in and holds you there. That's really all
you need to know; once you've found that place, you'll go back again
and again.
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