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The Rock Trio

Since their turn-of-the-millennium breakout, with the post-rockclassic, Ágætis Byrjun, Sigur Rós have unleashed a floodtide of critical praise. Which has been, really, variations on a theme; descriptions of the band's music tending towards the natural and the magical, often borrowing from the clichés of their Icelandic homeland —glaciers, elves, Northern Lights— in painting this otherworldly band as being from a place that seems like another world.


On their seventh album, Sigur Rós will, finally, earn a whole new set of adjectives. Kveikur finds them sounding more anxious, aggressive, more desperate. The music is louder, darker, and, mostly notably, often discordant; for a band long flirting with the relaxation-tapes edges of ambient music, all this noise and angst creates tension and friction rarely heard in their back-catalog.

If you're looking for the catalyst to this change, a line-up shift seems a likely culprit. With the departure of long-time keyboardist/woodwindist Kjarri Sveinsson, Sigur Rós now have the look of a stripped-down rock'n'roll three-piece: Jónsi Birgisson, Goggi Hólm, and Orri Páll Dýrason being billed, for Kveikur, on guitar, bass, and drums.

Be Aggressive.

The current of aggressiveness that's charged through Kveikur isn't just the work of one of these elements; nor, indeed, all three. But the way the whole record works with sound. Dýrason's drums often sound metallic, clanking, clattering; on "Hrafntinna," it sounds like he's smashing wind-chimes against a rusted fire hydrant.

Hólm's bass can create a vast noise, as on "Kveikur," when it's saturated in fuzz, and creates the effect that the bass components in your speakers have blown. Then there's Jónsi, whose angel voice (see: "Rafstraumur," where it's pushed to the front) and bowed guitar (drawled over flickering electronics in "Yfirbord") remain, but are deployed with an edge.

There's times, too, where the guitar is just distorted, angular, something bordering on rockin'. It's notable that "Kveikur" became the album's title-track, given it's the album at its most voluminous; drums smashed, bass slugged, guitar flayed, vocals a white-washed banshee squeal.

Following 2008's sweet, tinkling-and-twinkly Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, Sigur Rós took a hiatus. When they returned, with 2012's Valtari, they came back sounding more like themselves than ever before. The moody, melancholy, building-to-crescendos sound of the record feeling familiar, all those climaxes somewhat anticlimactic for a band rebirthed anew.

Where Valtari took years to sound like the same old band, Kveikur arrives a year later, shot through with new life. There's no need to get carried away with that newness —it lacks the elegance and formalism of their classics Ágætis Byrjun and ( )— but we can still celebrate it. Kveikur finds Sigur Rós sounding desperate, anxious, and somewhat ornery; words that, 'til now, had never been used to describe them.

Label: XL
Release Date: June 18, 2013