Record Review: Sigur Rós “Hvarf/Heim”

November 2, 2007 by Ben  Send to a Friend

As always, we tell you what our critic is into these days, just so you get a better idea if you can trust em or not:

Ben is too busy listening to the Shout Out Louds and Yelle to give a shit that The Decemberists canceled the rest of their tour.

Rating system
0 stars - Complete and utter garbage
1 star - Best just not to ever press play, save your ears for another day
2 stars - Not completely atrocious, but one you’ll probably forget about as soon as it’s over
3 stars - Good, but not great, likely with some excellent songs and others you’ll skip right through
4 stars - Damn good album, one you’ll definitely want to enjoy again and again
5 stars - Instant Classic

Sigur Rós “Hvarf”
2 stars

Sigur Rós “Heim”
4 stars

After seeing the beauty and splendor that was Heima - the Sigur Ros tour documentary that followed the band as they played free shows in Iceland in exotic venues that included abandoned fish production factories and protest sites, I was looking forward to hearing some fo the re-worked studio versions of some of old classic Sigur Ros tracks and anticipating some new material.

The record is split into two discs - the first of which is Hvarf, and is supposed to be new material. The problem lies in that two of the songs on the five song disc are not new at all - “Hafsol” is a B-Side to the single release of “Hoppipolla” - and it’s a fine track, but it’s a song that loses any sort of emotional impact when it’s not performed in front of your face. When I caught the band in Cleveland two years ago, it was the opening song, and it’s minimalism did a good job of keeping the audience in anxious anticipation for the real stuff to come. As the closing song on “Hvarf,” it sounds out of place and boring.

Inexplicably, there’s also a slightly re-orchestrated version of “Von” on the disc of new material. It’s not crafted differently enough to warrant a place on the record - especially when a similar version appears on the collection’s other disc, Heim.

But back to the new material - “Salka” is a calming cloud that would’ve sounded right at home on Ágætis Byrjun. It’s nice to know that the band is capable of returning to its roots that made them so strong after experimenting with a little bit of pop-music mentality on Takk. The loose strucutre and whimsy in lead singer Jonsi Birgisson’s voice is comforting, and there’s enough linear activity going on here to keep listeners entertained. When the instruments drop, leaving Jonsi’s piercing falsetto before the drums bring it back around, it feels like that familiar ocean-wave crash buildup resolution that made Sigur Ros famous in the first place. The song’s good - but it’s more of the same.

The song structure repeats once again in “Hljomalind” - but with an instrumental climax instead of a vocal one. And “I Gaer” isn’t worth talking about because it sounds like the obligatory “harder” Sigur Ros track that is there only to balance out the other songs. Of the new material, we’ve got a track that’s pretty good, a track that’s average and safe, and one that’s just bad.

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Heim, the second disc consisting of acoustic re-makes, is nostalgia-invoking and will probably get die-hard fans excited. But after the excitement died down of hearing these songs all over again, I realized that the majority of the time, the significant difference was either an inclusion of a piano where there wasn’t one before, or a more dramatic and re-focused piano.

Take “Samskeyti.” In the original, there’s a lost going on - organs, Jonsi’s crooning, sweeping strings. But in the re-make, the piano takes the forefront, making the song sound less frightning and positively haunting. Although the piano drove the melody in the original track as well, it was drowned by strings and production. This version is arguably better.

The updated version of “Vaka (Untitled #1)” steals the show here. During the documentary, the song was performed acoustically during a protest of a monolithic, electricity-generating dam that showed a strong example of the corporate rape taking place in Iceland. And while the re-recording doesn’t completely match the emotion of the movie, it comes damn close. Jonsi’s altered vocal cadencenses crescendo sound desperate and tortured. The remake removes some of the buildup present in the original, which lessens some of the impact of the climax when it hits, but also twists up the song.

“Heysatan” is really the only track that sounds pretty identical to its studio counterpart. There are several other songs off of Takk that probably deserved this slot a little more - “Saeglopur” is the first one that comes to mind here. While not a complete disappointment, “Heysatan” should’ve been left off the collection.

This is a pretty hard record to score. When looking solely at the new material, one has to be disappointed with the way the band is going - these tracks are forgettable, disposable and will leave the minds of fans and non fans alike when they drift away from the songs. And while the re-imagined songs are mostly good, and the tracklist is damn-near close to flawless in respect to Heim, these transitions were pretty effortless to make.

Heim is great, especially for fans of the Sigur Ros’s documentary - but Hvarf is legitmately troubling, and may predict a less-than-stellar forthcoming full-length from the band, should any of this material find up on the next album.

WANT MORE:
check out their official site: http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/
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