Isjaki – Sigur Ros
I think this is the best Sigur Ros album yet. It still has all the features that have made this one of the most distinct bands in the world: the soaring incomprehensible lyrics, the sweeping soundscapes, the orchestral movement. And yet, this doesn’t sound like anything they’ve done before. It’s heavier, darker, perhaps even more beautiful in a strange sort of way.
The drums have that sludgy feel that you expect from industrial music, and the guitars also often feel like they owe a debt to that genre. And yet, where industrial music draws inspiration from the rote, often relentless, application of mechanized force, Kveikur sounds more like the internal mechanisms of the human body—the pushing and pulling of lungs driving oxygen through its channels, the cracking of fingers in anticipation of action, the insistent heartbeat of someone filled with terror, the relentless will to press oneself to the limit.
Brennisteinn is the opening track and in some ways the centerpiece. It is loud; it is aggressive; it is beautiful. It lays down a marker that something very new is taking place. This is followed by Hrafntinna, which combines the traditional elfin vocals from Jonsi with a metal foundation. It’s full of anxiety and a sort of inarticulable terror. And that metal impulse is given the full treatment on the title track, which snarls and bites in a way I never thought I would hear from this band.
These darker undertones are balanced by some more traditional songwork as well. Stormur finds Jonsi sounding the most similar to the previous records, but the driving instruments prevent it from descending into fey ethereality. And Rafstraumur sounds, if anything, like an M83 song, with that gauzy texture and quick pacing.
Standing above all of these, though, is Isjaki, the most straightforwardly pretty track on the record and also possibly the most transcendent. Where much of the rest of the record seems defined by the sounds of tension, of bodies crashing together, of pistons and joints and explosions, this sounds like nothing except escape. It just drives upward and onward, asking more and more and refusing to listen to cautionary notes. It pictures a bright blue beyond and will stop at nothing to find it. Somewhere beyond us lies grace, if only we can find it.