Med sud I eyrum vid spilum endalaust

We Say...

Review by Corey DuBrowa

With all due respect to Led Zeppelin's previous attempts (see: "Ramble On" and Robert Plant's young obsession with the "darkest depths of Mordor," etc.), if the Lord of the Rings were rendered as one continuous pop song, the Icelandic collective Sigur Rós would be the obvious choice for house band. These guys have often come on as nothing less than the modern-day Yes, and their fifth full-length studio effort (to be reissued on XL as an "Ultimate Collector's Edition" for the holidays, featuring a 200-page cloth-bound photo book and exclusive live DVD) could certainly pass for the Close to the Edge for the '00s, replete with frontman Jón (Jónsi) Thor Birgisson's helium-high choirboy vocal gymnastics (as heard best on "Festival," perhaps rock's first attempt at creating a soundtrack for vespers) and the sort of architecturally intricate orchestration for which the group has long been known.

The album's title translates in English as "With a buzz in our ears we play endlessly," and while that may have previously served as a warning that entire album sides were about to be occupied by single, half-hour tracks, the band has evidently located some three-minute pop tunes within its arsenal to go along with the usual wilder flights of fancy. The album's sunshine-bright, edited-down opening pair, "Gobbledigook" and "Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur," set the tone for a record that fits well within the Sigur Rós canon without relying too much on past glories. That doesn't mean the group has given up on pomp entirely — the epic "Ára Bátur" is a 90-person extravaganza that includes contributions from the London Sinfonietta and London Oratory Boy's Choir that rivals anything buried within the Emerson, Lake and Palmer catalog. It does mean that they're willing to try new things, take chances (such as on the album's closer, "All Alright," featuring the band's first English-language lyrics, ever) and allow individual instruments to climb out of the dense rinse cycle that typified past efforts.

Sigur Rós' latest is the work of a band of fearlessly creative men, a bittersweet "happily ever after" meant for a weary world raised to disbelieve that any such ending was true, or even possible. In these guys' eminently capable hands, it is.