Saying that ‘Takk…’ is the Icelandic band’s most ‘accessible’ album is a little like saying that Einstein’s theory of relativity is the former patent clerk’s catchiest big idea. You see, some things were just not meant to be ‘instant’. Take the slow metamorphoses of rocks or the incremental scoring of a landscape by glaciers – it doesn’t just take a minute, girl, it takes time. Time and whole lot more time. Listening to Sigur Rós has always been a little like watching the dust settle. The band casts a handful of magic dust into the air, lights a candle, a stick of incense and invites the shamefully compliant record buyer to observe its slow descent until it practically obscures all that is common and familiar whilst remaining fragile, incandescent, pretty and strangely daunting; the aural equivalent of watching the aurora borealis? Or the aural equivalent of watching paint dry?
The band’s first record for a major label and their first since 2002 curiously stubborn and uncompromising ‘( )’ release, finds singer Jonsi Birgisson’s chiming falsetto curling around his native tongue, ditching the faux ‘Hopelandic’ language and singing in a voice that at least 0.5% of the world population can understand. Not that it makes the blindest difference to us, but at least they’re making the effort. And whilst the musical approach may fail yet to yield a ‘California Girls’ or ‘Molly’s Chambers’ there’s a discernible urgency and conformity to some of the songs. Take the beautifully rendered sweep of ‘Hoppipolla’, crawling forward as it does and whispering sweet, psychedelic nothings into your ear courtesy of some joyful Wilson-esque harmonies, some blinding sixties sunshine and a frightfully yummy layer-cake of strings, bells and pianos.
Bigger drums, bigger guitars, bigger ideas and bigger glacial metaphors. This is what you wanted, right? Sigur Rós on a stick? With all the bells and whistles? With allegro? Then you’ve got it. Sort of….