Sigur Ròs

Leita að ágætis byrjun,

en verð að vonbrigðum*

*I look for a good beginning,

but it becomes a disappointment

Hope and disillusion, harshness and grace, torment and ecstasy: opposites that meet, generating jarring contrasts and unpredictable unions, like the one between ice and fire of their native Iceland, a land with which Sigur Rós have never hidden having a visceral relationship, both as a personal refuge and as inspiration for their music.

The sublime charm of their homeland and its breathtaking landscapes make up the predictable yet fitting images evoked by "Ágætis Byrjun", Sigur Rós's second album, but the first to gain traction beyond national borders, as well as the springboard that would establish the band among the most authoritative names in music of the last decade.

The sense of a new beginning tied to this record must have been felt by its very authors too, so much so that they wanted to express it right from the title itself — "a good beginning" — chosen almost by chance by the band, as a comment on the first recording of the track later given that same title. And it truly is a new beginning for Sigur Rós, since, compared to the previous "Von", "Ágætis Byrjun" marks the first time that what would from then on become the band's settled line-up falls into place, with the arrival of a new drummer, Orri Páll Dýrason, and the invaluable addition of multi-instrumentalist Kjartan Sveinsson (guitar, piano, keyboards, flute).

Partly due to these line-up changes, the album's genesis was rather difficult, taking more than two years between the initial writing stage, the sound development and, finally, the recording of the tracks.

The album came out in Iceland in 1999, but only in August of the following year in England and the rest of Europe, and it immediately makes clear that its long gestation period was put to the best possible use, since the result is, quite simply and with immense naturalness, the definition of a unique style — one whose early signs could already be glimpsed in a few tracks on "Von" ("Hafssól", "Syndir Guðs", "Von"), but which here is fully expressed through multiple facets, each of which makes tangible an unprecedented sound, one that upends categorisation and convoluted attempts at reconstruction, in favour of a wholly distinctive and moving approach, entirely focused on expressing and stirring deep emotions.

Beyond stylistic considerations, it is precisely the extraordinary ability to create "moving" music that strongly characterises Sigur Rós on "Ágætis Byrjun", an album that is as varied as it is intricate, perpetually balanced between tenderness and violence, between lightness and gloom, all brought back to the common denominator of music born from the meeting of an electric "rock" framework with an orchestral sweep, both marked by Jónsi's quivering vocals, disorienting in their elfin tone, now ethereal, now piercing, but always incredibly expressive.

After a brief "Intro" (which is nothing more than a section of the title track played backwards), it is Jónsi's repeated vocalisations that lend an alien quality to "Svefn-G-Englar", a shapeshifting ten-minute track that, amid vertically twisting guitars and celestial melodies, ushers in dreamlike, anguished atmospheres charged with tension and emotional intensity.

These last distinctive traits can be loosely compared to those of the most emotionally charged post-rock, a category into which Sigur Rós's music has often been lumped. However, both the premises and the sensibility the Icelandic band displays here are different and thoroughly peculiar: while it's true that the dreamlike crescendo of “Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása” and its blossoming into pronounced guitar sound share traits with so-called “orchestral post-rock”, the elements and compositional sensibility at play are actually quite different, geared toward an airy, never cloying romanticism that characterizes the arrangements of almost every track.

Just consider the compositional rigor and, at the same time, the fresh playfulness that comes through in “Staralfur”, where the magnificence of the strings, joined even by a lyrical vocal insert, is deflated by a little acoustic guitar that acts as the song's turning point, before it transforms into a romantic flourish, lightly counterpointed by electronics and by an intimate vocal that conceals a passage of enigmatic palindromic structure.

Elsewhere, the tones grow more anguished, laying out a constant ambivalence between enveloping harmonic sensations and lyrics steeped in strong emotional pathos, dotted with light arrangements and unpredictable rhythmic ripples that, on more than one occasion (“Ný Batterí”, “Hjartað Hamast”), take on a sinuous, rolling motion, an unmistakable nod to Nordic moods and icy swells, at times soothing, at times frightening.

The strong geographical imprint of its origins, perceptible in the sound of much of the album and further expressed through the proud use of Icelandic for all the lyrics, adds yet another fascinating layer of inscrutability to a work already dense with suggestions stemming from its highly distinctive stylistic hybridization — a staggering mélange of ethereal romanticism, orchestral grandeur, psych undertones and broadly post-rock leanings.

Elusive, then, to any clear-cut definition, “Ágætis Byrjun” is a work that holds within it so many heterogeneous elements, shaping them according to a sensibility that never loses sight of the instinctive, emotional side of music, understood as nothing more than a vehicle for expressing feeling. Beyond rationality, this is the most significant factor in “Ágætis Byrjun”, a work whose importance would nonetheless be reductive to confine to its emotional aspects alone, since it undoubtedly helped mark a new way of making music, laying the groundwork for a style and approach that proved fundamental to the 2000s and to the band's own trajectory, from here on projected toward growing esteem and fame, achieved through a truly unique expressive force.

In short, far more than a good start: rather, a giant leap by four young Icelanders, guided by crystalline talent and genuine passion, who probably never imagined just how far this “new beginning” of theirs would take them.

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08/07/2008