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This concept extends to the packaging for ( ). It’s not the singer telling stories, it’s sort of a soundtrack for each person’s life.” A blank slate for the listener to conjure their own significance.Īccording to Jónsi the album is “unfinished and people have to finish it themselves. It’s nonsense-singing, designed to convey the absence of meaning. But, unlike that fantasy dialect, Hopelandic has no syntax, grammar, or definitions.Īccording to the band, it’s “a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music and acts as another instrument.” With its silken curves and plush open vowels, Jónsi’s vocals could be mistaken for JRR Tolkien’s Elvish. Neither do its eight tracks, which are divided into two halves: the radiant optimism and uplifting melodies of the front-end, and the darker, heavier stretches of the back-end.Īll are sung entirely in the constructed language Hopelandic (or Vonlenska in Icelandic). Released in 2002, the follow-up to Ágætis Byrjun is named ( ) but technically has no title. Perhaps realising their otherworldly quality was their greatest strength, the band would ditch communicable language entirely for their third album ( ), which remains the perfect archetype for the idiom ‘ignorance is bliss’. I forewent meaning in favour of immersion and imagination. Lesson learned: I chose to resist looking up translations to Sigur Rós songs. Its fantastical subject had given a mawkish reality to something that seemed transcendent. The twee pixie talk had dulled the spell of the enchanting music. But in some small, selfish way, the truth of ‘Starálfur’ had robbed me of my interpretation. There’s something beautiful about this childlike mysticism and fantasy pervading the everyday. They are then visited by the titular mystical creature ‘Starálfur’ – ‘ Staring Elf’.Īt this point, it’s worth noting more than half of Iceland’s population still believes that fairies are more than a fairy-tale. Instead, the verses find the narrator heading to bed in their blue pyjamas and hiding under the covers. Perhaps because of the ‘star’ in ‘Staraflur’.
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I had interpreted the song as another stroke of cosmic, angelic majesty. ‘ A little elf stares at me Runs towards me, but doesn’t move From its place – itself A staring elf’ Sonically, it’s all verdant strings and glistening plucks, but how disappointed I was to find the lyrical translation: ‘Starálfur’, the track after ‘Svefn-g-englar’ on Ágætis Byrjun, has a similarly somnambulant beauty. I got a rude awakening, though, when I realised that not all the band’s music translated so well. No wonder it sounded like a celestial lullaby. ‘Svefn-g-englar’ roughly translates to ‘Angels of Sleep’ and Jónsi’s refrain of ‘Tjú’ is the traditional sound made in Icelandic to comfort babies. It felt alien (a feeling reinforced by the artwork for Ágætis Byrjun) but also warm and comforting. To a 15-year-old brain that’d recently graduated from skate punk and alt-rock to jazz, electronic, and metal, it was mind-blowing. Indeed.Ĭonjuring an otherworldly calm with submerged sonar, bowed guitar, and Jónsi’s siren-like falsetto, the song wafts across ten minutes, but feels like blissful eternity.
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The album's title translates to ‘A Good Beginning’. Like many, my first introduction to the group was ‘Svefn-g-englar’, the ethereal lead single to their breakout 1999 album Ágætis Byrjun. Sigur Rós have said they intend to evoke this awe-inspiring scenery in their expansive, moving music. You can picture ancient Norse gods traversing the craggy mountains until they took their secret leave to the sparkling panorama behind the Northern Lights. Arctic tundra and grayscale geography stretching to the watery horizon. It presented the country as a mythical landscape, dotted with quaint fishing villages and imposing wind-blasted vistas. Especially the country’s depiction in Sigur Rós' 2007 concert film/documentary Heima. I was as smitten with discovering Iceland as I was the sweeping, celestial music it inspired.