Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust

Never has a band so quickly become a favorite of mine than when I got Sigur Ros's album Takk... from a friend last year. The Icelandic quartet is a brilliant blend of atmosphere, pop, ambient, rock, and classical. Actually, scratch that. Placing a genre on Sigur Ros is like calling Babe Ruth a baseball player; you've covered a little bit but left so much unexplained.

Whenever I refer Sigur Ros to a friend, I always insist they listen to a song the whole way through. A 30 second clip from iTunes just won't cut it. Why? Because the magic of Sigur Ros is in the gradual dynamics of their songs. They have mastered the (extremely) long crescendo. You might be able to "get" some bands after hearing few 30 second clips, but if you take a musical phrase from a Sigur Ros song out of context, it just doesn't make full sense.

Sigur Ros's newest album, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust, just released this past week. [The title roughly translates: with a buzz in our ears, we play endlessly....about on par with some of their other strange album titles which translate "a pretty good start", "thanks...", and "haven-home". And then there's the one simply titled ( ).] Med Sud is a bit of a departure from traditional Sigur Ros sound. A little less etherial and much more real. Sigur Ros announces this departure with the two opening tracks, "Gobbledigook" (don't laugh) and "Inni mer syngur vitleysingur". These are both much more upbeat and happy than anything they have ever recorded. This scared me at first, but now I embrace the Sigur Ros head-bob. With the exception of "Vid spilum endalaust", the album slows down a good bit....an a tempo if you will. The jewel of the record, IMHO, comes in track 7, "Ara batur". This slow ballad spends 7 minutes lulling you to sleep before rousing you to tears in the final 2 minutes with lush orchistration, crashing symbols, and the London Oratory Boys Choir. To say this song has a big finish is an understatement. Ara batur belongs in a dramatic movie ending and I don't doubt it will find its way into one someday. The album finishes with "All Alright", the band's first song sung in english....although the words are as hard to understand as ( )'s hopelandic.

Med Sud is Sigur Ros's first album recorded outside of Iceland. Perhaps this was done to symbolize their departure from the old sound. Bands can only get by with a certain sound for so long (save U2) before getting criticized. While the homeland is missed, this new ground is just as beautiful and breath taking.