Sigur Ros, an Icelandic group, has got a new album mainly filled with old material coming out Tuesday.
“Hvarf/Heim” has two discs. The first, “Hvarf” (pronounced Hvarf, I’d guess), is a collection of lost songs, something alluded to by the title, which translates to “disappeared.”
The second disc, “Heim” (or “home”), is composed of live acoustic versions recorded in Iceland, songs from Sigur Ros’ four studio albums. Crowd noise has been excised from the songs, apparently, giving them a studio-like quality.
Front man Jon Birgisson usually sings in one of two languages: Icelandic or “Hopelandic,” a gibberish he made up that lacks vocabulary and grammar. It’s unclear if any of these songs are in Hopelandic, since I don’t speak Icelandic; it’s all a bit nonsensical to my ear.
All in all, this collection is a good enough introduction to the band’s glacially paced, slightly endearing, somewhat misguided attempt at spiritual uplift.
That might seem a little harsh, but is it? Let’s think about this. Let’s think about the whole language thing. Along with made-up words, the group actively decided to sing in Icelandic, a language understood by maybe half a million people worldwide.
(And yes, I know their Web site has rough translations of the Icelandic songs, but still, I mean, c’mon.)
The language thing is a clear enough statement: Words don’t matter. It’s about how the music moves you, man. The group even had a contest in 2002 for fans to interpret one of its Hopelandic tunes, “Njosnavelin,” which translates appropriately to “the nothing song.”
So all this raises the question: How does “Hvarf/Heim” make a person feel?
Well, I’m sort of bored.
Take the third track, “I Gaer,” which starts with a twinkling xylophone that sounds like it was lifted from “Edward Scissorhands.” Clashing guitars interject, followed by Birgisson’s falsetto whine. Occasionally, there’s a guitar swirl straight out of Pink Floyd. The whole thing floats away after about six minutes, with the xylophone turning off the lights. It’s pretty in a wind-burnt way, but nothing I’d seek out.
A reimagined version of their first album’s “Hafsol” begins with a guitar’s clean strum. Over the course of 10 minutes, the song transforms into something like Enya for art houses. It’s almost uplifting, which is an aim of the group: spiritual nourishment through song.
That’s an admirable goal, one that bassist Georg Holm drove home when he told the New York Times he likes playing shows in churches.
But hey, since I brought that up, let’s talk about religion. Or, no, instead, let’s talk about agnosticism, and what that mindset has to do with Sigur Ros.
When it comes to music, as immaterial as any belief, who wants a wishy-washy middle ground that stretches from beginning to end? It’s a cop out, and it leaves the whole thing so wide open to interpretation that, at least for me, it ends up feeling drained dry.
That’s what this music is to me, with its dense Icelandic vocals and its mass call for interpretation. It’s a bunch of well-organized sounds. It’s not spiritual or uplifting. It’s like a winter wind without the beauty — or even simply the distraction — of snow.
Also of note
A quick five months after releasing his much ballyhooed debut on Starbucks’ Hear Music label, Paul McCartney is putting out an expanded version of “Memory Almost Full.”
If you missed it the first time around, good for you. Keep missing it.
The album rarely rises to the term “Beatlesque,” settling into near-seamless mediocrity. The songs are dull, the music sometimes gratingly produced, and McCartney falls far short of his promise.
Here, he rhymes about a girl that makes him “feel glad,” one he wants “so bad.” And guess what his heart does? Why, it “beats madly.” Naturally.
The album saves itself a bit with the triptych “Vintage Clothes/That Was Me/Feet in the Clouds.” And yet, it’s too little, too late.
Somebody should have told McCartney that, when the memory’s almost full, it’s time to hit the delete key.
Reporter Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455 or arathbun@heraldnet.com.
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