Sigur Rós’ music is the perfect example of this.
That is to say that art, by it’s very beauty and artistic nature, points to God. I’ve always liked the concept of the “spirituality of aesthetics”. The only answer is that music like this is not planned. Each of these songs nearly bursts at the seams, overflowing with string arrangements, lush piano melodies, waves of feedback and electronics, and Jonsi’s utterly inhuman and inexplicably gorgeous vocals. How did a group of friends ever sit down and plan to write songs as moving and powerful as “Starálfur” or “Vidrar Vel Til Loftárása”? Songs like these belong in movies at those pivotal scenes when someone has a religious experience, when long-lost lovers are finally reunited, or when someone is brought back from the brink of death. I wonder how these songs began in the minds of these Icelandic lads. But even in that frigid, barren icestorm is a beauty. But elsewhere, the album is whipped with frigid electronic winds and shrieks, like the Icelandic winter coming down hard with a vengeance. “Svefn-G-Englar” begins the album off with sonar pings and a gentle organ melody, and then, a wave of sound floods the entire song as the guitar lets loose a barrage of noise so beautiful it’d break Kevin Shields’ heart. One minute, the listener is enveloped by soaring strings and angelic vocals.
But the music is often as fragile and delicate as a snowflake. And one experiences both extremes while listening to Ágætis Byrjun.Īs beautiful as Ágætis Byrjun might be, it is a foreboding beauty. The former portrays Iceland as a haunting land of childhood and nostalgia, the latter as a barren, frigid landscape populated with ghosts and restless ancestors. The only view of Iceland I’ve ever received is through the films of Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, such as Children of Nature and Cold Fever. Much has been made of Sigur Rós’ music and how it reflects the landscape and climate of their native Iceland.
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