Sigur Ros
Agaetis Byrjun
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Sigur Ros
Agaetis Byrjun
Fat Cat, 2001
RiYL: My Bloody Valentine, Radiohead, Mogwai |
Today's music isn't all that bad, but a listener can't just sit in his or her bedroom listening to the radio and be blown away by all the latest adventurous experiments. There are so many bands out there that you have to search under the mainstream, and the world of independent music is producing some pretty amazing records. Even with great independent music though, older generations can still say, "We had the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and oh yeah, the Beatles were pretty good too." And up until a year ago, there was not one band I could put in the face of the Baby Boomers, and say, "You didn't have this. And not only did you not have this, you know you wanted to have this." But ha! Now we do.
This band we have is Sigur Ros.
This album we have is Agaetis Byrjun.
How good is this album? Agaetis Byrjun stands up in overall artistic merit to any record ever made. Do you want arrangements as stunning as those of the Beach Boys? This album has that. Do you want songs that force you to re-think the boundaries between genres? They're here. Do you want a voice that can make you feel truly alive and completely blow you away? Check. The lead singer of Sigur Ros, Jonsi, has a voice with the power of Janis Joplin and the beauty of Carl Wilson. Do you want lyrics that are so amazing, they carry as much weight as the words of Henry David Thoreau? This album probably has that -- it's tough to tell.
The reason it's hard to verify that last point is that the whole album is sung in Jonsi' invented combination of Icelandic and English. What I can say with conviction is that Jonsi's vocals have a strong emotional resonance. I could say a meaningless phrase in English, such as "light, close front way," and it might not affect you much. On the other hand, if someone were to cry that same phrase with emotion, it would be obvious that that person is in great pain. And just because I don't understand what Sigur Ros are saying doesn't mean that I can't perceive the emotion they put behind it, or the urgency of their message. Music was conceived as a way to express emotions that can't be expressed in words, and Sigur Ros are a perfect reminder of that.
Normally, here's the point in a review where I'd talk about the songs. The truth is that I tried that for at least four tracks, and I realized that I kept using the same words: beautiful, suddenly changes, angelic voices, indescribable. And what good is that? Nothing can properly prepare you for what you will hear on Agaetis Byrjun. People's first reaction to this music is usually something like, "Is this music for real?" The next thing that comes to mind is that Sigur Ros just combined rock and classical music. But after 10 listens or so, it becomes apparent that is absurd.
These songs are definitely not "classical," in the vein of Mozart or Bach, and these songs are definitely not "rock," as in The Rolling Stones or Nirvana. But these songs are classical in the sense that a hundred years from now Agaetis Byrjun will be a statement of the times, and that this music should, and will, live forever. And these songs are rock in the sense that they stir up a passion heretofore only found in the catharsis of "rock" music.
In simplest terms, this music is beautiful as a sunset, and as confusing as advancement nuclear global time-share. In other words, it is easy to say that this music is beautiful, but it is hard to say exactly why. Most of the time, it's hard to even tell what is going on instrumentally. Sometimes the guitarist plays his guitar with a cello bow. Other times, the songs are inundated with white noise (recordings of the wind or various natural sounds) used so well it sounds like an instrument. I have never heard an album so beautiful, so innovative, so majestic, so entrancing, so intriguing, so deep, and so listenable, all at the same time. And that is quite a grand achievement.
Most often when bands try to break the rules of music and completely restructure what music sounds like, even they don't necessarily fail, the end result is hard to listen to. And on the opposite side of the spectrum, you can listen to a pop record that is extremely pleasant, but doesn't offer anything that extraordinary or even original. Yet Agaetis Byrjun it is not only catchy, but also revolutionary.
The word "music" is defined as "the art of giving structural form and rhythmic patterns to combinations of sounds produced instrumentally or vocally." Sigur Ros is music at its most basic, and most advanced. They have crafted a masterpiece of revolutionary proportions that will be hard to surpass.
Here is my theory: 500 years from now, it will be nearly impossible to tell the difference from humans and robots. The only way to tell a robot from a human is that when a robot listens to Agaetis Byrjun and cries, it will short circuit. Humans will only feel inferior.
PHIL LINDERT |