...which means it should be available on your favorite bit torrent site any day now! Let's hope the new album is as balls-out (literally) as this album art.
And did I mention there will be one track sung in English? Does anyone else worry it might suck? Or maybe, it just will sound exactly the same? (Maybe the lyrics will be, "I saw you... I saw you... I saw you...")
Now I must return to ransacking my house for the SR tickets I held in my beloved hands for one day before losing them. If any Olathe garbage collectors happen upon them, I will reward you handsomely for their safe return. Perhaps you can be my date?
UPDATE:
Head over to Sigur Rós' website to snag a high quality mp3 of the album's first single, "Gobbledigook." While you're there, watch the balls out video for the song, unless you're at work, then you may want to wait until you get home. No, Femme, it doesn't suck, nor does it sound like Sigur Rós as we've come to know and love them. If anything, it sounds like Sigur Rós just picked up a copy of Sung Tongs and decided to have some fun with acoustic guitars. Is this their freak-folk record? Find out on June 24, when the album hits stores in North America. Or, pre-order the album from their website starting on June 2, and get access to an mp3 download a week early. Let's not forget Sigur Rós are playing at the Uptown Theater on June 12. Tickets are still available, and you'd be crazy not to pick one up if you haven't already.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
New Sigur Ros Album Due Out June 24 (Updated at 2 PM by Sonic Ryan)
Monday, December 3, 2007
Featured Event:
Free Showing of Heima
Ordinarily on Mondays we write about an upcoming concert. Yet as all music lovers know, we're entering the Annual Concert Drought®. (Don't believe me? Check out our skimpy upcoming show schedule.) I don't know about you, but when winter gets forceful and bands hibernate, I like to travel to the little warm center of the world known as... you guessed it, Iceland!
Now you can, too. Tomorrow, Tue., Dec. 4, at 7 p.m. Lawrence's Jackpot Saloon is hosting a FREE SHOWING of the Sigur Rós documentary Heima. (On a side note, the special that night is $1.50 PBR draws! Get glacial and glitzed!)
Still not convinced? Check out our review of Hvarf/Heim -- the documentary's accompanying album -- here. Watch a preview of Heima here.
P.S. That's a free showing of Heima, you pervs, not -- something else...
Monday, November 12, 2007
Album Review:
Sigur Rós - Hvarf-Heim
Grade: 78%........................................."
"Halfsol" - mp3
Under my “Genre” column, ITunes has deemed Hvarf-Heim “Unclassifiable.” The term could suit any Sigur Rós album, right along with dreamy, escapist, bleak, dense, sparse, ephemeral, crystalline, wasteland, wonderland. Hvarf-Heim may not be the band’s most accomplished effort, but proves the perfect aperitif for that post-Takk, pre-next-album transition.
The eleven tracks appear on two EPs: Hvarf, or “Disappeared,” ones that disappeared, aka never made it into the band’s catalog; and Heim, or “Home,” reworkings of old favorites.
First-out-of-the-gate “Salka” sounds like a ( )-era number, which might prove a turn off for listeners burnt out on Jonsi’s wailing “E-sai-you.” (Apparently this is the only word in the made-up Hopelandic language -- does this seem like a wasted opportunity to anyone else?) The band picks up the pace with “Hjamalind,” then blasts us with “I Gær,” one of the album’s finest stampeding moments. Yet disc one’s show-stopper, literally, is the ten-minute closer “Hafsol,” whose plucked strings and flutes and e-bows evoke the bombastic epics of Ágætis Byrjun. “Hafsol” buoys, and more to the point, justifies the album.
Disc two commences with “Untitled #3” (under its "real" name “Samskeyti”), the album’s only real “D’uh” moment. The completely faithful version of a piano-only track left this listener wondering, “Why bother?” “Staralfur,” though by no means superior to the album version, sees Jonsi’s vocals at their most tender (See: four-minute mark. Feel: shivers). Ágætis' gorgeous titular track receives an equally elegant send-up here, a Heim highlight along with a recording of “Von” that crushes the original and Hvarf versions under its mighty steel-toed boot.
With Sigur Rós, criticisms seem like nitpicking. I’m reminded of that late-semester freshman paper. There’s always that A-student who spends a semester proving himself. Then he hands in a perfunctory final paper that, while not his best work, evinces potentiality glimmering under the surface, ready to be mined when he comes up for air.
Sigur Rós: Take this C+ in stride. Relax, enjoy your break. I'll see you next semester.