Heard Here

( )
Sigur Rós

In 2000, Sigur Ros released Ágætis Byrjun, which, literally translated, means “Pretty Good Start.” The band’s sophomore album showcased a stunning, epic quality and beauty that no one has managed to match in the two years following its release, leaving only the Icelandic quartet to break their own record, so to speak. On their follow-up, the enigmatically titled ( ) (perhaps meant to suggest the absence of a title), Sigur Ros have produced a record so haunting it’s ghostly, steeped in a grandeur that borders on the imperial. At times, however, the glacial tempos and sweeping guitars take on the air of pretension that sometimes accompanies such richness, leaving the overall product just short of something that could have, and should have, been majestic.
Clearly, Sigur Rós are trying to push the sound they’ve been developing for the last eight years to its final stage of growth, and when they accomplish their mission, it sounds truly unbelievable. The triumphs on this album brim with elegance, mystery, and more clearly marked emotion than even the best tracks on Ágætis Byrjun, yet its shortcomings are marked by undercurrents of pretension and listlessness that can wear on a listener, since most songs last well over seven minutes.
One annoying aspect of the album is the fact that the band decided not to title any of the album’s tracks, and wrote their songs’ lyrics in Hopelandic, a language the band invented. Musically, the band’s biggest gains and losses both come from the enigmatic element they have emphasized on this record. In some cases, it adds a beautiful remoteness to music that is already sweeping, overwhelming, and indescribable. Particularly on track one, which turns from wistful to warm thanks to sad strings, a simple, beautiful keyboard part, and lead singer Jonsí Birgisson’s aching, almost child-like voice. Birgisson sounds so completely alone that language ceases to matter, and his point is made.
On other songs, unfortunately, the same style comes off as pretentious and difficult. This pretension is at its worst on track two, in which the band crafts a sound so mysterious and distant that they get lost in it before the audience has a chance to. Track five, an evolved version of a song the band previously called “Dauda Lagid,” or “The Death Song” in English, also gets a little too self-involved, and never provides a true opening into the song’s intended emotions and dynamics. Lyrical and musical pretensions aside, though, when Sigur Rós get things right, they soar. Track four, formerly titled “Njosnavelin,” or “The Nothing Song,” has a beautiful, stately loneliness to it, and appropriately comes at the end of the first half of the album (there is a thirty second silence between tracks four and five intended to divide the album into two distinctive halves). Both halves, in fact, end on wonderfully high notes. The album’s eighth and final track is an 11 minute masterpiece that rides an urgent drum beat and Birgisson’s lonely siren of a voice into a climax that is at once unexpected and natural.
According to one translation of their lyrics, the last lines sung on Ágætis Byrjun were: “We sit down excited, listen to ourselves play in rhythm to the music / but the sound wasn’t good / we were all in agreement / we will do better next time / this was a good beginning.” And despite the odd frustration, the band has, with ( ), unquestionably kept its promise.

—Max Willens

Lost in Space
Aimee Mann

Just like she suggests in “Guys Like Me,” you can put your money on Aimee Mann. Her music is like a scientific theory that has been tested against the evidence so many times that it is now accepted as fact that Mann writes good songs. Following superb albums like Bachelor No. 2 and her critically acclaimed soundtrack for Magnolia was not an easy thing to do, and though this album is not up to par with those works, it’s no less endearing.
The songs on this album, on the whole, are less obviously catchy than Mann’s past work and far more brooding. The fatalistic “Humpty Dumpty” kicks off the album’s sober trajectory with a deliberate (but by no means dragging) tempo as she croons, “Get out while you can / Baby, I’m pouring quicksand / And sinking is all I had planned / So better just go…” It’s a warning, and while Mann does indeed sink farther into critical and often dreary space she’s created, it’s a catching sadness. On “High on Sunday 51,” Mann highlights the drug metaphors that reappear throughout her lyrics: “Hate the sinner but love the sin / Let me be your heroin.” The theme of dependency is partnered with drum loops and layers of acoustic guitars, piano and a brilliant harp part, making the song a perfect rainy day sing along.
Lost in Space does have its crazy, rock-inspired moments, like the bright, guitar-heavy “Pavlov’s Bell,” complete with super-electric solo and hopeful lyrics: “If you’re what I need / Then only you can save me / So come on baby, give me the fix.”
And then there’s the forlorn tale of self-denial and failed love in “Invisible Ink,” which is a quiet, mostly-acoustic tune. It gets postmodern when Mann questions the authority of her own words: “But nobody wants to hear this tale / The plot is clichéd, the jokes are stale…I could get specific / But nobody needs a catalog / With details of a love I can’t sell anymore.”
Lost in Space, like all of Mann’s work, demonstrates her masterful songwriting and storytelling abilities. Here, the stories are bigger than the songs themselves. If you like lyrics and witty rhymes, this album is classic, but by no means is it the best showcase of Mann’s musical abilities.

—Kari Wethington

Spiderland
Slint

Listen to any of today’s post-rock giants, whether it be Mogwai, Bardo Pond, or Godspeed, You Black Emperor!, and you’ll hear Slint mulling around in the background. Forming in the late 80s out of the remnants of early alternta-heroes Squirrel Bait, Slint turned Louisville, Kentucky into the unlikely home of what would become one of the most influential, if short-lived, underground rock acts of the decade. Over the span of just two albums and one EP, Slint was able to construct a legacy other bands spend a lifetime searching for.
Produced by Steve Albini, their debut record Tweez mixed short experimental compositions with odd lyric pieces, and though it received some critical recognition, few if anyone knew quite what to make of it. Their sophmore effort Spiderland (1991), though, proved a landmark record for every indiephile from Long Island to San Diego and set the tone for the minimalism and experimentation that would come to be the hallmarks of the white horse known as post rock.
With Brain McMahan on guitars and vocals, Todd Brashear on bass, David Pajo, of later Tortoise fame, on guitar, and Will Oldham, who later played with the Breeders, on drums, Spiderland combines chromatic and minimalist guitar textures, pounding drums, and uncommon tempos with tales about fortune tellers and sea pirates. Imagine Nirvana slowed down to a snail’s pace with the dynamics as brutal as “Lithium” or “Milk It,” but with cryptic, nearly-whispered spoken-word vocals instead of Kurt Cobain’s self-destructive howl. What you get are haunting tracks like the opener “Breadcrumb Trail,” a mysterious first-person narrative centered around a trip to the carnival gone awry.
Slint are masters at building tension and pathos, a trait epitomized in the brooding “Don, Aman.” Here, without the help of his bandmates McMahan’s guitar grumbles and spits alone as his protagonist confronts his demons while he takes a piss on his friend’s front lawn and watches a plane fly overhead. Despite the banality of the material (or maybe because of it), Slint manage to convey something in their music that is at once affecting and disturbing.
The crowning glory of the record, though, has got to be “Washer.” In an eerie anticipation of nearly everything post-rock, “Washer” manages to condense Mogwai’s entire second record, 1999’s Come On Die Young, in just under seven minutes. While the minor-key guitars chime, McMahan urges his lover to “fill your shoes with the dust and memories that rise from the shoes on my feet,” before an absolutely epic explosion has Pajo’s guitar screaming like it’s being drawn and quartered.
Though not the most accessible of bands, compared to Tweez, Spiderland made Slint seem at least digestible, and upon further listens, patently brilliant. Bands like Slint won’t ever get play time on modern rock radio or MTV, and thank God for that. Their relative obscurity is part and parcel of their appeal and has only helped to augment the mystery their music actively and expertly cultivated.

—John MacDonald