November 14, 2007

Sigur Ròs
Hvarf-Heim

Patrick Smith l contributing writer

The in-between album release is like a siren that calls to bands, ready to dash them upon the rocks of critics and fans. Collections of b-sides, remixes, acoustic takes and live recordings are all seemingly irresistible to bands who haven’t put together their latest full release but for some reason need to put some of their art out into the world.

With Hvarf-Heim, Sigur Rós bravely ties itself to the mast post, and like Odysseus, hopes that the ropes will hold. It hopes that it can hear the sirens without steering its ship to be wrecked on the rocks.

Like a few others before it, Sigur Rós manages to find some success and beauty in its efforts. The Hvarf disc is a collection of unreleased tracks and of remixes, and Heim is a CD of live, acoustic recordings. In the end, both discs have value, but Heim is much more triumphant and worth adding to a collection.

Hvarf opens with the unreleased song “Salka,” and it is nothing unexpected from the band. It channels the darker side of the band's sound, moving through drifts of its ambient sound with carefully timed builds. The next track is a more rock-oriented song “Hljómalind.” It’s louder, more direct, and wouldn’t have been out of place on the band's last release Takk, quickly making this release a guessing game which album that each track is influenced by.

It’s clear that Hvarf doesn’t have the same fluid consistency and tightness that Sigur Rós' albums tend towards. The three unreleased tracks that begin the disc have clear seams between them.

“Í-Gær” opens and ends with chimes that rest somewhere between a child’s lullaby and the title sequence music of a ghostly horror movie. However, the darkness of it helps to tie it to the opening track. The last two songs are heavily Takk- influenced remixes of “Von” and “Hafsól” off of Von, and are held together by that commonality.

Overall, Hvarf becomes one of those releases that has value to the most industrious of fans. All three unreleased songs are gorgeous and could likely have fit snuggly onto one of the past releases. “Von” and “Hafsól” are noticeably different versions of the original. “Hafsól” is in fact barely recognizable, much shorter and with heavily present lyrics that barely pass through the Von version. It’s more direct and basic with the ending, a huge sustained swell followed by a two-minute-long breaking apart that is a massive re-imagining of the ending of the older version. With all of its touches as an extra touch to a Sigur Rós collection, as its own release, Hvarf is not strong, or distinct enough to be more than a bonus.

It is on Heim that the band produces the material of greatest worth, songs beautiful enough to stand out as their own. The acoustic takes cut through much of the lushness of previous releases, moves sound past the heavily layered originals. Style and influence is laid bare. The touches of rock (“Agætis Byrjun”) and of classical ("Samskeyti") are all opened up to the listener.

For a band that always wants the music to speak for itself, this is a simplification of the message. Beautiful extravagance is taken away, leaving what is, at least for Sigur Rós, something akin to minimalism. More than at other times, there is a feeling that the lyrics are important, even when they remain in the band’s invented nonsensical language.

None of this is to say that the band keeps quiet just because it is acoustic. “Von” is heavily dominated by thick drums, with cymbals reverberating throughout. For many of the tracks, there is a base, whether it is the drums of “Von,” the piano of “Samskeyti” or the strings of “Starálfur.” The songs are all shortened, except for “Von” and through this simplification allow a better understanding of the intense intricacies of the band's efforts.

The distinctions between the album versions are sometimes small, but enough to show a near-complete re-learning of the songs. For them, it is not as simple as replacing an electric guitar with an acoustic. Whole effects are either done away with, or redone with horns, strings or wind instruments. The songs are made to work as acoustic songs, new again.

Sigur Rós has been called a visual band. Its music videos have been stunning, cinematic. The music lends itself to a soundtrack. When performing live, they are often accompanied by a giant screen behind them, filled with images throughout. With that style in mind, Hvarf-Heim can be imagined as a picture, or a film. It is a film with a different shutter speed, a picture developed with a different filter, a shot with a different frame, expanded or shrunk.