I am not a music critic. I wish I was. Rating and reviewing records has always been something I wanted to do...and to an extent, I guess, I have done so. Ridiculously amateurish Christgau-esque blurbs for the junior college newspaper...Lester Bangs-influenced rants on my blog...I even wrote four or five feature reviews for a mainstream classic rock website, paid with the CDs I wrote about...
...but even those were submitted with a sense of uncertainty and trepidition, a paranoid sense that somehow, no matter how much I thought they were decent pieces, they weren't good enough. I felt like the guy who solicited them wasn't nearly as pleased as he said he was. Of course if I was wrong, and most likely I was since people don't ask you to write more after publishing your first, I was only sabotaging my own prospects.
No matter. I still maintain that I am no music critic. I know this is a fact for one reason and one alone: Sigur Ros.
First off there aren't enough positive/complimentary words in my vocabulary with which I could use to describe their music and it's effects on me. Believe me, I've tried. Not only have I tried to describe these things, I've already admitted to not having adequate terminology...more than once! I seem to be stuck. I have come to the point where I'm totally unable to be objective about this band. Now one could make a good argument that there is no such thing as a record review that is actually objective. Art doesn't allow for it. Music eludes it. Always has and always will. But my devotion to Sigur Ros has crossed the boundaries into a place where they can absolutely do no wrong.
So it's hard for me to do what an album review should really do, which is to share the feelings, emotions, etc. the music stirs up within the author as he/she listens to and contemplates the material. I do want to share those things, but as I already said, words fail me. They always will when it comes to Sigur Ros. To make things worse a tendency I've accepted as fact that Sigur Ros is a "love 'em or hate 'em" proposition. I don't know that I would be able to change the mind of a hater. The music may well do that over time...case in point, I have a strong suspicion that "Brennistein", from the new LP "Kveikur", will convince those without a propensity for angelic voices that these guys really do have a much more abrasive side that will appeal. "Isjaki" and "Raufstraumer" pack some incredibly catchy melodic lines that in another universe only slightly different than ours might be considered as "pop music". All the while avoiding the "balloons in the sky, nature movie soundtrack" sweetness of "Hoppipolla". Certainly far removed from just about anything vocalist Jonsi unleashed in his solo run during the band's hiatus (which is not to dismiss that music).
The least a record review should do is be able to describe the music, even if only in the most general terms. Once again Sigur Ros make it difficult with the new album. Their sound and style vary (I don't want to say "progress") so thoroughly that you can't even say, "Well, it sounds a lot like 'Takk'" or "I think it shares a lot in common with 'Valtari'" because not only do the comparisons fail, they wind up sounding ridiculous. The only common denominator between the individual albums in their catalog, that is consistently present, as I see it, is the otherworldly, innocent, gut-wrenching, sometimes heartbreaking sound of Jonsi's voice. It is that voice, I have to admit, even though I hold the other musicians contributions in equal esttem, it's that voice that sucked me in, that held me firm, that brought me back and that will keep me until the day I die and if there's a good God out there I'll hear it even after.
There's a lot of ambient noise scattered throughout "Kveikur". It's almost as if they've recruited Einsterzende Neubauten to take the place of the string section that seems less utilized here than on previous works. Huge German radios with broken speakers, blaring with such volume that even white noise becomes distorted. The title track especially trudges it's way through the cacophony and turns into one of the heaviest Sigur Ros performance this side "Popplagid". When the band play this song in concert there is, projected on a huge screen behind them, archival film footage of pre-Hiroshima a-bomb tests...nuclear wind blowing back a line of trees like an Oklahoma tornado. These are the images that I can't help but think of when I hear "Kveikur" and though the rest of the album isn't as...what?...metallic...there is a feeling of "Phoenix rising from the ashes"...it's just that the ashes are fallout and the Phoenix is the hope of beauty's surviving, the redefining of innocence by necessity...it's the need to consign memories to a new oral tradition so that they aren't lost on the other side of the holocaust...
Oh and look just how pretentious I've become! That's "rockcrit speak". It may well mean a lot to me, or better I should say it likely makes sense to me but someone else? "What the hell are you talking about?" Right? Of course I'm right. Which is further evidence that I am no music critic. At least not past "The Beatles were awesome" and "Sadly Justin Beiber has not come into his own and by all accounts he won't during the course of his lifetime". Both of those, I would assume, are "Duh" statements. Everyone loves the Beatles. If you don't like the Beatles, even if it's just a song or two, I want nothing to do with you. You were born without a soul and you frighten me. Then again, if you flat out tell me, "I don't like the Beatles" I will naturally assume you are a liar and so it will be okay to socialize with you (to the extent that I want to socialize with liars, that is). And if you're one of those hipster jackasses who wants to be first in line at Starbucks every morning and you try to tell me that "nobody likes the Beatles anymore", or "oh, they had their day in the sun, but that's long past"...mister, you're a fool. Moreover you're WORSE than a liar because you obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about. Then again I should expect no less from someone who wears a dark orange t-shirt with the Reeses's Peanut Butter Cup logo emblazoned across the chest. In. Public. Trying to act like you don't care if people think it's "cute". It is "cute". But I don't think "cute" is what you were shooting for, was it, Hoss?
But I digress. I'm only harping on about the Beatles here to make a point about why I can never review a Sigur Ros record (though I try...obviously, I try). In my mind, and I am as convinced of this as I am you'll never see Slayer on the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Between the two Sigur Ros is the better band. Although I should probably say that I do consider the Beatles more of a "band". I'm certainly not taking away from what is undeniably the art of the Beatles' music, Sigur Ros, to me, are much more "artistic collective" than "band". I suppose that's what puts them ahead, in my estimation. I don't know if they're conscious of this combination of "artist" and "band"...they have more than once claimed in interviews that they're only in it to make the music, and I believe them. I also believe that this is what makes them even more purely creative on that artistic level. It just happens. I honestly don't think they "make it happen". It happens. And when that's the case, when IT is in charge... That's where I want to be...
