SIGUR RÒS - Hvarf / Heim

Alongside the splendid DVD "Heima", which documents a series of concerts held in various distinctive settings in their homeland in 2005, Sigur Rós return with a double CD that, alongside three unreleased tracks, makes ample room for reworkings of songs from across their discography, old and new.

Given these premises, one might suspect that behind "Hvarf/Heim" lies a purely commercial operation, designed to keep public interest in the Icelandic band alive despite the lack of an actual album, now more than two years since their last release, "Takk…". Well, anyone harbouring such a suspicion can safely stop reading this review right here, content perhaps just to know that "Hvarf/Heim" doesn't introduce any significant novelties to the unique, distinctive sound Sigur Rós have honed over their last two albums.

Listening to the two discs, however, reveals that this assumption, probably a fair one for the vast majority of bands out there, simply doesn't apply to Sigur Rós, who manage to rework some of their own songs with astonishing naturalness, drawing on their usual fragile sensibility and now also on an artistic maturity unafraid to engage with its own past or to alter its magnificent atmospheres.

Of the two parts of the work, the first, "Hvarf", comprises five "electric" tracks recorded in the studio, three of which are previously unreleased: right from the opener, "Salka" (an outtake from "( )", often played live), Sigur Rós perpetuate the magic of their music, once again opening up their dreamlike world of dim lights and intangible mist, beautifully rendered through a fluid carpet of rounded sounds, over which Jónsi Birgisson's voice flows more placidly than ever, expressing emotions that need no shouting, to the point where the electric crescendos become almost superfluous, since their touching sweetness alone is enough to carry you into another dimension.

Next come the other two unreleased tracks, songs "classically Sigur Rós" in style, written around the turn of the millennium, which trace emotional swings skilfully filtered through the guitars and vocal arabesques of the single "Hljómalind", or through the repeated shifts in rhythm of "Í Gær", suspended between graceful xylophone dances and guitar surges with an unusual psych-prog flavour, far removed from the post-rock twists of "Ágætis Byrjun" and "( )".

The remaining two tracks on "Hvarf" are a further dive into the band's more distant past, all the way back to their debut album "Von": from that record come the title track, stretched out to over nine minutes of gradual, aching crescendo made solemn by a constant flourish of strings, and "Hafsól" (one s short of its original title, as was already the case with the "Hoppípolla" single), whose intricate sonic swirls are here rendered in a lighter, more airy register, almost as if giving concrete musical form to the rainbow and the timid rays of sunlight mentioned in its sparse lyrics.

The second disc, "Heim", contains instead six previously released tracks, now presented in a completely unplugged form, one in which the orchestral components of the band's sound truly shine, highlighting the essential contribution made to it by the string quartet Amiina. And while "Heysátan" and the intensely piano-driven instrumental "Samskeyti" (the "Untitled #3" from "( )") aren't all that different from the originals, a deeper reworking comes through in the gentle warmth draped over the lulling "Ágætis Byrjun" and in the version of "Staralfur" which, stripped of all its redundancy, shows how just voice, strings and a handful of acoustic notes are enough to achieve a truly spine-tingling result.

The acoustic setting, in fact, doesn't seem to diminish the effective structure of the older songs, but instead lends them an aura of serene lightness, expressed both in "Vaka" (formerly "Untitled #1"), here transformed almost into a nursery rhyme sung with infinite tenderness, and in the intimacy that pervades this further interpretation of "Von", where muted rhythms and strings, this time serving as simple accompaniment, dictate the song's hushed pace.

Despite the substantial lack of stylistic evolution, "Hvarf/Heim" represents something more than a mere collection for fans: both in the classically electric tracks and in the richly detailed acoustic reinterpretations, the extraordinary expressive power of a truly unique band comes through clearly, one whose music once again finds its way straight to the heart.

Don't be misled by demands for "novelty" at all costs; don't turn up your nose at the fact that their records are released by a major; and above all, don't need decades to recognise that Sigur Rós are among the very few true greats of our time. Today.

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04/11/2007