With all the banal, formulaic crap that's constantly played on corporate radio, Sigur R??s is a refreshing change of pace or maybe confounding, depending on your view. This Icelandic quartet creates warm, ambient, enveloping music that is nothing short of extraterrestrial. None of their \songs"" (if you can even call them that) are under six and a half minutes long and are sung mostly in a madeup language that the band affectionately refers to as ""hopelandic.""
The actual composition of Sigur R??s is unusual as well. Jon Birgisson leads the band with his high soprano voice and guitar bowing (that's right, a guitar played with a violin bow). Keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson accompanies him with his unorthodox chords and long musical phrasings. Orri Pall Dyrason plays the drums with soft hair wires that look like brushes so as not to disrupt the delicate balance of the entire band. And finally, bassist Georg Holm is the most conventional member, using his fingers to pluck the strings. This set-up makes Sigur R??s' music more than the sum of its parts.
Sigur R??s received national acclaim two years ago with their brilliant sophomore album Agaetis Byrjun (meaning ""Good Start""). The most noteworthy praise came from fellow prog-rockers Radiohead, who claimed that Agaetis Byrjun heavily influenced Kid A. Shortly after, they took Sigur R??s under their wing and on tour with them. Agaetis Byrjun was actually released three years ago on the same Icelandic label that gave Bjork's first band'the Sugar Cubes'its start. Shortly after, a major label bidding war ensued with MCA winning and releasing Agaetis Byrjun in the United States.
Sigur R??s just released their third album a few weeks ago which has been called ""pretentious"". It's probably not pretentious but definitely frustrating, seeing that the album's title is just parentheses and all of the eight songs are untitled. Also, the liner notes of ( ) are only silvery, blank sheets of transparent paper. However, referring to a song as ""Track 2"" isn't really a problem since a song title like ""Flugufreslarinn"" from Agaetis Byrjun doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
Unfortunately, ( ) isn't quite as magnificent as Agaetis Byrjun, but is good nonetheless. On ( ), Sigur R??s don't utilize their tranced-out vibe and hypnotic presence to their benefit as well as they did on their last album. Most of the songs on ( ) are hard to distinguish from one another since they maintain a monotonic, yet dreamy, tone and feel. Agaetis Byrjun had fuller, more varied sounds weave in and out of the songs. But make no mistake about it, ( ) puts listeners in the same warm trance that made people receptive to Sigur R??s in the first place.
Sigur R??s is sure to transform listeners with their performance tonight. In fact, some people who have seen Sigur R??s in concert have passed out from their slow, hypnotic music. Holm believes this is due to concert goers getting high before the show and expecting the concert to be like a traditional loud, heart-thumping show from some heavy rock band. But don't be discouraged'with the other-worldly, skin-tingling music of Sigur R??s, you'll already be in an altered state.
