Sigur Rós
( )
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So how do you follow up a critically acclaimed masterpiece of an album? It seems to be something all great artists have to go through in their careers, several of my favourite bands included. You could go all pretentious on us and release an album of a different genre and style a la Radiohead's "KID A", the follow-up to "OK Computer", perhaps you could go back to your roots like the successor to Opeth's "Blackwater Park" which is the aptly named "Deliverance" or maybe even do what so many artists do and release a pathetic excuse for a record a la almost every single follow-up of 2002.
Sigur Rós try to walk all of the above paths at the same time: they half expected bad press for this release by pre-emptively warning fans that it was the record they wanted to release, and not the album the fans wanted to hear so it was no wonder some people were half-expecting the rapid genre change route that Radiohead took. But then again, this album was conceived around the same time as 2001's "Agaetis Byrjun" so that didn't look likely. Then fans started worrying that "( )" contained all the material not good enough to get onto Agaetis Byrjun. No matter what this album produced, you can't help but feel it would have failed to match the amazing hype they managed to create with Agaetis Byrjun.
The truth is that this album tries to make up for what it lacks in musical originality and creativity with stupid pointless gimmicks like removing song names and album titles. Apparently this is all part of the great Sigur Rós message, that forms of identification and hard-to-pronounce Icelandtic titles don't really matter these days. Maybe you're wondering why I'm making such a big deal out of this fact but when an artist becomes so pretentious it puts "PLEASE REMOVE THIS STICKER" on the record label information sticker you can't help but feel a little bemused as to the extents some artists take to be "arty" and "original".
The music itself is nothing special, most of the songs roll into obscureness and it's often difficult to differentiate between one song and another. However, the few genius parts of this album are almost worth the money or download time you'll spend on it. The opening track is one such example of ( )'s greatness, an ambient moody track with a soft, lush piano melody supporting soothing vocals for one great chill-out song. However the next song is rather bland and uneventful - it's not bad but it has no memorable qualities whatsoever, a song spanning 6 minutes has to have more than a simple melody and drumbeat repeating over and over for 90% of the song. This is where the album dissapoints, most of the songs fail to grab your attention and take up the dreaded category of "background music".
Track number 3 is a stirling example, the same little piano melody is repeated for just about the entire song and for the first couple of listens it's actually a great song, but it very quickly becomes tiresome and repetitive. Unfortunately, it takes more than simple ambience and basic strings to give the same melody over and over any replay value at all - this is one instance where vocals could have helped. Track number 4 is another song which offers absolutely nothing new, but at least it strays from the repetitive nature of the other songs on the album and perhaps if my ears agreed with the vocals more I would rank this song up with the opening track and the final song.
Track 5 returns to the good old repetitiveness issue again, like every song apart from Track 4, it centres around looping the same basic foundations of ambience and drums over and over, with slightly better vocals popping up occasionally along with louder ambience. It's rivetting stuff, really. The same can be said for track 6 again, it is an instantly forgettable track which just fails to meet the grade and has the same looping problems that I've mentioned far too often already; easily the worst song on the album. Oh and the same goes for Track 7, even the vocals sound repetitive on this song...a 13 minute song which could have been made up from around 5 or so different samples lasting 10 seconds each.
Just when you start to think things couldn't get any worse, along comes the best song on the album to cheer you right up! Finally something which doesn't sound tired after 3 listens. The highlight of the song is towards the end(which by some miracle isn't exactly the same as the start) when fantastic wailing vocals ala Thom Yorke meets GYBE style drums and guitars, it's all a bit fantastic really, especially after enduring the absolutely blandness of the majority of the album. The song really is spectacular and for the negative comments about most of the songs that I've made, I really can't stress enough how good this particular song is. It's a brilliant finale to an album which if you only got to listen to it once or twice would probably be given 10/10..but unfortunately you want to listen to albums you pay for more than once and so the repetitive nature of most of the songs means you're sick of the album before it's even had a chance to properly grow on you.
Despite containing my two favourite Sigur Rós songs, it's still a disaster of an album which is predictable, unoriginal and repetitive(the amount of times this word is mentioned in this review should only emphasise how repetative most of the songs get). It's by far the worst of the three albums in the Sigur Rós discography. The first time you listen to this album you will more than likely be blown away, especially if you liked Agaetis Byrjun..but give it a few days or a week at most and you'll probably listen to one or two tracks before moving to a different album... and no amount of pretentious gimmicks will change that fact.
Rating: 3.5/10
) Flyfree-er, fly liberator?
