Sigur Rós

For a band that's built a nearly decade-long reputation on being inscrutable—at the risk of flirting with formula as their catalog has grown—Sigur Rós show their capacity to surprise right from the start of Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. Even the very name of their opener, "Gobbledigook," pokes fun at the band's unwieldy titles and their invented Hopelandish language, which Jonsi Birgisson typically sings in an ethereal falsetto. He sounds unusually sprightly on "Gobbledigook," and the track's galloping percussion underscores the band's desire to break out of their shell. The cover art even features naked youth racing off to play–and the translation of the title involves infinite play.

The good vibrations continue with "Inní mér syngur vitleysingur"–and while it's not exactly Mastodon or Slipknot—one has to imagine that drummer Orri Páll Dýrason enjoys stomping his way through the poppy piece. Like much of the band's work, it's fleshed out with an array of instrumentation, the sort of song that seems built for performing with a philharmonic. But the runtime is brisk, and the melodies are warm and accessible.

From there, the album proves to be an intermittent departure, rather than a complete departure, but the variance makes the epic and orchestral numbers make more of an impact; taken away from the context of the album and listened to independently, however, tracks like "Festival" (which flirts with the ten-minute mark) feel too predictable, and not as powerful as many of their predecessors. "Ára Bátur" and "Festival" plod prettily along until their inevitably soaring crescendos; like leading post-rock instrumentalists like Mono and Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós are shackled somewhat by the limited range of possibilities. "Ára Bátur" sounds beautiful but gets almost satirical with its majesty-on-steroids finale. On the other end of the spectrum,"Íllgresi" and the brittle, piano ballad "All Alright" (sung in English!) are about as sparse as anything the band has done to date.

—”Adam McKibbin”
07.21.08

With their fifth full-length album, Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (translated as With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly), Sigur Rós have taken the poppy, sunshiny leanings of their previous album a step further into the light. The band has always been known for otherworldly soundscapes, and while there is enough of that here to keep the faithful happy, the band also writes straightforward, three-minute pop songs like the incredible catchy, sticky-sweet duo ("Gobbldigook," "Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur") that kick the album off like the first rays of the morning sun blazing through your bedroom window. That feeling continues on through the album as both the joyously soaring vocals and the buoyant melodies keep things floating happily on air. The arrangement of sound is quite different from previous albums, too. In the past their sound was characterized by a great wash of instruments merging together into great, gently heaving walls and waves of sound; on this album, for the most part, you can pick out individual instruments whether it's the acoustic guitar that underpins many of the songs (and provides the main backing on the intimate and quite lovely, and quite un-Sigur Rós-like, "Illgresi") or the lone piano that begins "Ára Bátur" (which does expand out into an epic undertaking with over 90 people including the London Sinfonietta and London Oratory Boy's Choir eventually playing on the track). Despite the few tracks that reach for the heavens, for the first time the band sounds grounded and stripped down. Songs like "Festival," with its pounding bassline and charging drums, and the melancholy album closer, "All Alright," which is based on a lonely piano figure (and features lyrics sung in English for the first time in the group's history), are firmly tethered to earth and shorn of excess artifice. In the past it was easy to be impressed with the sound of Sigur Rós, to be carried away by the grandeur of the band and be hit hard by the titanic emotions. On Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust you can really hear the human hearts behind the wall of sound, and while the emotional impact is on a smaller scale, somehow it is even more affecting. ~ Tim Sendra, All Music Guide