Ágætis byrjun, from Iceland's Sigor Ros, is one of those albums I've been meaning to pick up for some time, but haven't gotten around to it. Until a whimsical purchase on iTunes last week made it possible.
Sigor Ros's music feels like hearing a great big giant yawn without a care in the world. You are at once humbled and soon revered when confronted with the majestic splendour of music so inhumanly beautiful that your heart melts with each croon of Jon Por Birgisson's haunting voice.The above description applies itself well to the second track of the album, "Svefn-G-Englar", a song that appears to roll itself lazily along across grassy lands like an aural blob gobbling up everything in it's path. It's a ten minute exercise in repetition, but how sweet it is.
Granted, the lyrics do not make any sense to a non-native speaker of Icelandic, but intonation proves itself well placed among the swirl of such explorative and emotional music. If there was anything that could transcend the language barrier and draw out certain feelings from the listener, Sigor Ros has planted it's feet firmly in a niche of it's own.
Staraflur is a track that most everyone with a passing interest in music has certainly come across at one time or another, it is an evocative, mesmerizing tinkle of swelling orchestral accompaniments. Sounding much like a suicide love letter to the world and all the beauty it contains.
Flugufrelsarinn, really, who can be expected to be able to pronounce any of these titles properly? Is the third track, in which Birgisson's tries for something more nihilistic, laying down cryptic vocals that speak of heartbreak so deep and profound that I felt it chronicled a broken man rising from the ashes to transcend a terrible pain. A quick look at the lyrics revealed something quite disturbing that I was not previously made aware of. It turns out that every song Sigor Ros has composed, uses a made-up language.
I am not kidding. It is known as "Vonlenska" which is Icelandic for "Hopelandic", the English translation of the same word. The intention for singing unintelligibly appears to come from the desire of the band to divorce words from meaning, and rather put the focus squarely on intonation and feel. However critics may regard employing such a device, such lyrics do lend themselves well to interpretation and can mean different things to different ears.
The album moves ahead from here on out, exploring various moods of the generally downtrodden variety. Utilizing a diversity of instruments including sax, cello, bowed guitars and generous helpings of reverb. Sneaking itself behind the guise of jazz, space-pop, drone, prog-rock and shoe-gaze; It is an enchanting experience more so than one would expect. Despite my favourites consisting of just three songs (Svefn-G-Englar, Staralfur and Olsen Olsen) the rest of the cd makes for a fantastic backdrop to a night spent laying in your backyard, looking up at the stars and wondering if they are looking back at you.
It's impossible not to love music like this.
4.5 out of 5
