One of the most poncey albums of the year comes to you with compliments from Eno and Byrne. It’s a little bit airy fairy for my liking, but all the while, I find very little to insult in this album. I don’t know if it’s hypnotising me while I’m listening to it, but I find my attention drifing away while this album is on.
The whole album makes me slightly uncomfortable, I know that there’s so much that I don’t like about the album, but somehow it shouts “LOOK OVER THERE!” and points behind me every time I’m close to pinpointing the exact thing that I dislike.
It’s beautifully composed, there’s some lovely singing on here, there’s a good mix of really soft and relaxing music, and some slightly less soft and relaxing music, to add some kind of contrast in there. The style is very minimal without being empty, the music is inoffensive without being boring.
This album is like one of those pictures where it’s a jar, but also two faces. It’s very deceptive and is desperately changing from one thing to another.
Listen to this album: And be slightly confused.
72%
Extracts from ‘Home’, ‘I feel my stuff’, ‘Life is Long’ and ‘One fine day’
You know how rock albums will sometimes have a short interlude section to split up sections of the album and cleanse your pallet to get you ready for the next onslaught of music. These sections are usually quite slow, bland and boring, but act as a breather for your ears. Like when you have a sorbet at a restraint between courses. This album is a collection of songs like that.
Usually these interludes last between 30 seconds and a minute, which is the perfect length for something like this. Sigur Ros make them last for between 3:33 and 9:23 which is far to long for something so dull. It’s like they are good at having the initial inspiration for music but then don’t know now to develop that into a song.
Sigur Ros are an Icelandic ambient, post rock outfit, made from four Icelandic people singing in Icelandic. Backed by boring musical notes.
The whining voice of the lead singer is pitiful and weak and while it may make young, loveless females swoon at his soul wrenching wailing, it makes me want to give him a slap.
I don’t speak Icelandian, so cannot understand what Jón is singing about, but frankly, I am not compelled to find out and can assume it’s something along the lines of ‘Oooh, I’m boring and nobody likes me, please someone like me, I’ll try to be less boring.’
If you are an open fan of boring music, then this might be for you, but if you think that boring music is boring then don’t listen to this cause you’ll find it boring.
If you cut each song down to 90 seconds, you would probably get a good album, of nice music but listening for longer than this length of time is, well, boring.
Listen to this album: To numb your mind of all sensation.
Rating: 58%
Extracts from ‘Inni mer syngur vitleysingur’, ‘Festival’, ‘Illgresi’ and ‘Straumnes’
