Jónsi found those richly transcendent tone poems in the songs of Ágætis byrjun and the production of Ken Thomas (Wire, The Sugarcubes, M83) and so crafted a cold, flighty, tactile answer to Pet Sounds with its horns and strings set to something equally melancholic, but not quite so innocent and smooth. As with the steely classicist packaging of Joy Division albums at the start of their career, this twentieth anniversary box set of early icy interludes (including a lustrous but raw 1999 live performance at the Íslenska Óperan) and their quiet march toward something grander is the perfect match of music to its edifice.Īfter the singularly dark display of their debut disc, Von, with its minor keys and moldy My Bloody Valentine imitations, the main Sigur Rós member, Jónsi Birgisson, sought to move beyond intimacy and duskiness to find something larger, but somehow lighter-something with density yet without weight, an airiness at one with his clarion falsetto.
Housed in a gray linen box, with its famed fetus illustration all cozy and compact: there is no other way in which to experience the cool planes and distant shores of Ágætis byrjun, Sigur Rós’ two-decade-old breakthrough record.
0 kommentar(er)
