Sigur Rós - með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

[Ian]

Your opinion?  I'll be picking up my copy tomorrow, at which point I'll post mine.

ps: June has been a kickass month for tunes.

[murlough23]

ps: June has been a kickass month for tunes.

One shouldn't be allowed to use the word "ass" in a thread about this album.

[Aaron]

One shouldn't be allowed to use the word "ass" in a thread about this album.

ass

ass

ass

[murlough23]

ass

ass

ass

Your witty responses never cease to amaze me.

[enemy anemone]

but...but...but... 

[Ian]

Wanderer, I think you meant,

ass

ass

ass

ass

All four of them

[murlough23]

Wow, looks like I have brought thread hijacking to an all-time low.

[dgp11776]

Yeah, pretty asinine stuff.

[Aaron]

Your witty responses never cease to amaze me.

Especially at 1:30 in the morning!

[Josh]

Your witty responses never cease to amaze me.

Okay, David, we get it-- you're frustrated. No need to be anal about it.

[Aaron]

ok, back on topic, I am liking this album.

[dgp11776]

ok, back on topic, I am liking this album.

The back end, the front end, or both?

[Aaron]

The back end, the front end, or both?

oh man...we are on a roll today.

[murlough23]

Okay, David, we get it-- you're frustrated. No need to be anal about it.

Oh, be quiet. You're full of crap.

[spacebrat311]

I'm going to avoid all the butt jokes and just slip out the back door.

[enemy anemone]

*shakes head*

being the butt of these jokes is more than anyone should bare.

[murlough23]

It looks like I've been unseated from the "King of Butt Puns" throne.

[Ian]

Sounded really good for the first 5 tracks, then kinda dragged a bit after that.  I wasn't paying full attention though, so that may have had something to do with it.

Even so, I don't see this slipping out of the top 20 for the year.

[spacebrat311]

I'm feeling the drag at the end, but love the first half. I particularly love the direction the first two songs take, and hope to see more exploration in that direction in the future.

[bloop]

I just plain love this album, from the poppier, more accessible beginning, to the slow burners (that, admittedly, are pretty normal for a Sigur Ros album) as well.

[valleycat]

They had this one for a listening party on Spinner.com, and I liked it.  I've only owned one Sigur Ros album for a long time, Agaetis Byrjun. I might consider getting this one too. 

[murlough23]

It seems kind of weird to criticize Sigur Ros for still having long, slow, majestic compositions on their album when that has been their main calling card for over ten years now. They diversified. I don't expect from one or two upbeat tracks near the beginning (which are certainly a good stretch for the band) to indicate that the entire album will sound like that.

That said, it is a bit lopsided to have it start off fast, slow down, and for the most part, stay slow through the entire back half. Jumping back and forth between the two can also potentially be jarring, so it takes skill for a band to vary the tempo of their compositions in a way that both keeps an album interesting and flows well.

NP: "Show Me Forgiveness", Bjork

[bloop]

My own impression of several of the songs toward the middle and the end is that we have a pop artist that wouldn't be out of place as a classically-trained composer.  The bridge is there, between the upbeat and the inspirational (in a grander sense, as opposed to what I normally think about for INSP, cheesy frustratingly average music making God out to be a favorite uncle). 

If I were ranking their albums right now, this one would probably directly follow Agaetis Byrjun, making it second place in my book, but Agaetis has had some 8 years to grow on me, so we'll see.

[spacebrat311]

It's not the slowness of the back half that I criticize, so much as the fact that the slow songs in the back half (really more the back third as I examine the tracklist again) don't grab me the same way as earlier songs do. Ára bátur and Með suð í eyrum are rapturous, but nothing after them on the album seems to stand out to me. I also don't need an entire album to follow the poppier formula of the first two songs, but it was such an interesting approach that I was really left wanting more, and would love to see them explore that side of themselves further sometime.

[bloop]

would love to see them explore that side of themselves further sometime.

I would as well, but I think the back 1/3 of the album took with me a lot more than it did you.  I'm glad to see someone liked "Ara batur" in particular as much as I did, though.

[murlough23]

It's not the slowness of the back half that I criticize, so much as the fact that the slow songs in the back half (really more the back third as I examine the tracklist again) don't grab me the same way as earlier songs do. Ára bátur and Með suð í eyrum are rapturous, but nothing after them on the album seems to stand out to me. I also don't need an entire album to follow the poppier formula of the first two songs, but it was such an interesting approach that I was really left wanting more, and would love to see them explore that side of themselves further sometime.

I understand. One of the difficulties that I have with Sigur Ros is that some of their songs take too long to get to the "rapturous" part. You need some amount of buildup or the crescendo feels cheap and contrived. But too much time spent repeating the same thing while building to that point can make me not want to listen to a particular song all that often, even if the "good part" is really awesome. So there are the really awesome slow songs in the Sigur Ros canon, and then there are the tedious ones.

The last four tracks or so get so quiet that I do find it difficult to pay attention. I think track 10 is an instrumental reflection of track 9, so those two run together in my head... and the song in English... try as I might, I can't seem to stay focused on it for very long. You'd think being able to actually understand the lyrics would make a song stand out to me.

[Ian]

I didn't even realize I was listening to the English track the first time I heard it.

As for the slow parts, I can tolerate them.  Ambient music tends to be repetitive, or at least very long to go anywhere, so it doesn't really stand out to me as a problem specifically with Sigur Ros.  It's generally more trying to create an atmosphere than it is trying to be a good song (although these are good songs, which makes the repetition a little more obvious).

[murlough23]

I didn't even realize I was listening to the English track the first time I heard it.

Me neither. And I thought Bjork's enunciation of the language was weird.

As for the slow parts, I can tolerate them.  Ambient music tends to be repetitive, or at least very long to go anywhere, so it doesn't really stand out to me as a problem specifically with Sigur Ros.  It's generally more trying to create an atmosphere than it is trying to be a good song (although these are good songs, which makes the repetition a little more obvious).

That might be my problem. I see the atmosphere as the setup, not the ultimate goal. I really appreciate it when bands know how to setup a beautiful ambiance for their songs, but I need it to develop into something. I guess I'm more of a song-oriented guy.

[bloop]

They definitely pull it back a lot after the positively huge moment at the end of "Ara batur", and I would consider "Straumnes" almost like an extended outro to "Fljotavik" - very likely intentional on the part of the band.

You'd think being able to actually understand the lyrics would make a song stand out to me.

I don't always understand what he's singing in that song (a word that kind of breaks up in the singers throat can sometimes do that to me), and I haven't looked it up yet.

[murlough23]

OK, I promise I won't take it personally this time if folks are confused by my opinion on this... but I'm going with a B minus for this album. My rationale:

- A few tracks that show an exciting new direction for the band (generally the first two + bits of others): A
- Sigur Ros's usual mix of captivating beauty and the sometimes plodding, long buildup required to get there (most of tracks 3-7): B
- Last four tracks on the album being almost completely uninteresting (perhaps tranquil and beautiful in small doses, but four tracks of this in a row is unacceptable after the diversity shown earlier on): C-

Average the three, and it comes out somewhere on the low end of "too good for me to give it an average grade".

NP: "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Part 1", My Morning Jacket

[dgp11776]

No complaints here - that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the album.  I just settled out at a B instead of a B-.

[murlough23]

No complaints here - that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the album.  I just settled out at a B instead of a B-.

I might have gone with a B, but I gave Takk... a B and I like that album a good deal more than this one. Actually, I think this new one is my least favorite of Sigur Ros's official studio albums aside from Von (and I don't think it's possible for them to ever suck that much again).

I just figured out last night what drives me nuts about the song "Festival". The slow buildup on that song cuts to the up-tempo, exhilirating finale so quickly that it feels like two completely separate, disjoint songs. It makes me wonder why they consider both parts of that composition to be "one song". When the tempo changes, there's absolutely nothing about the melody or instrumentation or anything else that I'm picking up that would tie the two together thematically. If the second half of "Festival" were its own track, it'd probably be one of my favorites on the album. But the first half kind of sucks - not because it's slow, but because it's slow with little variance or layering, just like the last four tracks on the album. I've heard Sigur Ros do plenty of "beautiful slow", and this ain't it. Perhaps a minute or so of that as an intro to the up-tempo part of the song would have been fine, but it really feels like a four-minute song unto itself.

NP: "Thank You Too", My Morning Jacket

[dgp11776]

I wonder if bloop disagrees with us. 

[bloop]

I wonder if bloop disagrees with us.

I don't think either of you are being unreasonable, but I'll go into it a little.

-Agreed
-I like the Sigur Ros formula (a lot of time to set up atmosphere building to a big climax - very theatrical), so I think I just liked those songs more than you.
-Where I most disagree in that the "Illgresi" put me in mind of classical forms of music (that tend to be decidedly tasteful).  With that in mind, it's very successful, so I rather liked it.  I still think of "Straumnes" as an extended outro for "Fljotavik", and perhaps not entirely necessary, but I find both to be rather beautiful and direct.  The final track took the longest to grow on me, but I think the lyrics are actually pretty affecting now that I understand them.

No doubt, they could have ended it with the "exciting new direction", but they chose something a little more subtly different than what they usually do.  I didn't think it to be a real flaw, so my score doesn't reflect that, but I do understand why that kind of thing wouldn't be for everyone.

[murlough23]

-I like the Sigur Ros formula, so I think I just liked those songs more than you.

That makes sense. There have been a few examples of this on their previous albums, so it's not like it's some shocking thing out of nowhere that makes us wonder where their taste went. It's always been an area where I've had a difficult time with the band.

-Where I most disagree in that the "Illgresi" put me in mind of classical forms of music (that tend to be decidedly tasteful), so I rather liked it.

"Illgresi" is the most tolerable of those last four, mostly because I like the acoustic guitar. I'll defer to you on the "classical forms of music" since I'm not terribly scholarly in that area. That track by tiself, as a calm period in between two more "majestic" tracks, would probably work better for me. Following it up with "Fljotavik" just makes the album feel dead in the water at that point.

I still think of "Straumnes" as an extended outro for "Fljotavik", and perhaps not entirely necessary, but I find both to be rather beautiful and direct.

My problem there is that I'm already rather "meh" about "Fljotavik", so I don't need another two minutes of an even more vague sketch of what was already a sparse song that already had me thinking I need to go get some coffee.

The final track took the longest to grow on me, but I think the lyrics are actually pretty affecting now that I understand them.

Actually understanding Sigur Ros lyrics, what a concept! Don't get too attached. 

No doubt, they could have ended it with the "exciting new direction", but they chose something a little more subtly different than what they usually do.  I didn't think it to be a real flaw, so my score doesn't reflect that, but I do understand why that kind of thing wouldn't be for everyone.

Subtlety's fine, but it ceases to be subtle when they let it dominate almost half the album. It feels more like being hit with a Nerf sledgehammer.

But I understand that this sort of thing tends to play better with you, so I'm fine with the "it's not for everyone" explanation.

NP: "Aluminum Park", My Morning Jacket

[bloop]

Subtlety's fine, but it ceases to be subtle when they let it dominate almost half the album. It feels more like being hit with a Nerf sledgehammer.

I'm not going to argue it too much (although the idea that a subtle album is no longer subtle if the whole thing or a large portion is subtle really does confuse me a lot).  I'm trying to reel back on the contention here, but here I go blowing it.

Album's length:  55:39
Last 4 Tracks:  16:24

How is that almost half?  It's not even 1/3!

[murlough23]

I'm not going to argue it too much.  I'm trying to reel back on the contention here, but here I go blowing it.

Nah, it's cool. We're just explaining things we personally like and dislike.

Album's length:  55:39
Last 4 Tracks:  16:24

How is that almost half?  It's not even 1/3!

You're forgetting the first halves of "Festival" and "Ara Batur". Combined, that adds roughly ten minutes. 26 minutes is almost half of 55, and I did say "almost half". I still like both of those songs, but would probably like them more if the first half of both didn't drag on for so long.

NP: "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream Part 2", My Morning Jacket

[bloop]

Sigur Ros just takes the time to earn their big swells, and it doesn't bother me in the least, but that's just where you and I have always differed on "the formula".  Those songs are two of the best examples of where they tend to gravitate for my money.

I didn't forget those two songs, btw.  I just didn't think we were talking about that section of the album in this context.

[murlough23]

Sigur Ros just takes the time to earn their big swells, and it doesn't bother me in the least, but that's just where you and I have always differed on "the formula".  Those songs are two of the best examples of where they tend to gravitate for my money.

I agree that they need to be earned. Just diving into the climax without that climax feeling warranted would be jarring, and perhaps a bit manipulative (see certain Coldplay songs). I think we differ on how long it takes to "earn" that sort of a climax, and at what point you start to squander the goodwill you've earned by delaying the payoff for too long... and that's likely a subjective matter.

I didn't forget those two songs, btw.  I just didn't think we were talking about that section of the album in this context.

Which is why I felt the need to clarify that the early part of both songs was part of what I considered to be the problem.

[bloop]

I thought it was pretty funny that whoever wrote the review for Pitchfork actually seemed to hate the part where it did blow up in "Ara batur" - something about even Andrew Lloyd Weber saying it was a bit too much.  I disagreed strongly (I think of it as a defining moment on the album), but it made me laugh anyway.