Sigur Rós
ÁTTA
BMG/KRUNK
ABOVE THE CURRENT
Iceland is a beautiful place, but even such beauty can have a sinister edge. The country’s notorious serial killer Axlar-Björn was executed in 1596 at Laugarbrekka where all of his limbs were broken with a sledgehammer while he was still alive—then he was beheaded. He was such a terrifyingly violent individual that people were petrified that he would return as a ghost to haunt them, so his body was cut into pieces and put in three cairns to prevent his spirit from visiting.
Sigur Rós, one of Iceland’s most valuable musical exports, reminds us with each album that even the most beautiful place on Earth can be sullied by human nature. Their new album ÁTTA has been joked about by the band as “gloomy,” but when they get emo about life they tend to make some of their most remarkable music. Icelandic for “eight” to denote their eighth record, ÁTTA is the dark shadow creeping over the field, and it’s worthy of attention. The demure-yet-dazzling 10-track LP is more intimate in scope when compared to their yawning post-rock discography.
Their partnerships with the 41-piece London Contemporary Orchestra conducted by Robert Ames and Icelandic brass outfit Brassgat í bala is to thank this time, as is longtime collaborator Paul Corley, with whom the band beautifully mixed and co-produced the album. The three bandmates accidentally reunited before and during the pandemic after a decade of no conventional studio output. Jón Þór Birgisson (Jónsi) is still on vocals and cello-bowed guitar, and is joined by multi-instrumentalist Kjartan Sveinsson (Kjarri) and bassist Georg Hólm (Goggi). As Jónsi noted in the leadup to the album release, “We’re getting older and more cynical so I just wanted to move us so that we felt something!”
And they’ve certainly accomplished that goal. Each track on ÁTTA orbits around the room, with the record best taken as one slab melting in slow motion. Their typical glacial ambience and powerful builds are immediately apparent on the post-apocalyptic first single “Blóðberg” (Icelandic for “blood rock”). The orchestra and band slowly flow and recede on the album like the song’s namesake, which is a pink and creeping thyme plant that grows over the volcanic landscapes of Iceland.
The beauty of nature—especially Icelandic nature—will remain even after humans are no longer violent blips wreaking havoc on the planet. Sigur Rós concentrate on that kind of manmade destruction on ÁTTA. “Ylur” is all about desolate landscapes, while closing track “8” mixes indie-folk with the trio’s typical post-rock stargazing. The tall rainbow banner set ablaze on the cover art for ÁTTA fits so well with this 56-min suite of solemn music soundtracking a dying planet—the listeners float over it in a wash of color, mostly due to the total lack of percussion.
ÁTTA’s opening song “Glóð” nods to the band’s glory days circa Ágætis, when the strings were bathed in celestial light. The opulent “Skel” (Icelandic for “shell”) grows in beauty and is the most forceful use of the orchestra as a blunt instrument on the release, while Jónsi’s falsetto climbs over the instrumentation at a trepidatious pace. The sense of bombast or live momentum can stall out during these slower climbs without the hard hits of percussion and melody heard on 2008’s Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust and 2013’s Kveikur. But this is, after all, an album that wrestles with powerful and horrifying environmental destruction and humanity’s place within it. ÁTTA is easy to appreciate and another reminder that Sigur Rós is just as indispensable decades later.
