The Sinking Ship

It's amazing how fortunes can change in the music business. A few years ago, Sigur Ros had the world at their feet. A track taken from their fourth album “Takk…” and used in a high profile BBC wildlife documentary brought them widespread public attention, which they capitalised on with a series of releases that welded Jonsi Brigardson's choirboy-on-helium vocals to an increasingly pop-folk oriented backing, eschewing the epic post rock of previous outings.

They went global, despite a general lack of any obvious rock star charisma and without any apparent concessions in their musical approach – they even continued to sing in Icelandic. They had, by all appearances, squared the circle of being successful on their own terms.

Then it all went horribly wrong. The past couple of years have seen plenty of product – live albums, re-recordings of older material, concert DVDs, etc. – but little new music. This seems to have been the outcome of intra-band strife and creative inertia resulting from that “we've conquered the world, so what’s next?” point in a global rock band's career. Jonsi released a solo album, and another record as part of the Jonsi and Alex duo.

Sigur Ros looked over, making the title of their last album (2008's “With a Buzzing in Our Ears, We Play Endlessly”) seem rather ironic.

Now, apparently against the odds, we have “Valtari”.

The sticker on the packaging announces this as “The new studio album…”. The truth is that it’s been pieced together from recordings made over the four years since “With a Buzzing..” was released. Bearing this in mind, the album is surprisingly coherent, perhaps too much so. There are eight tracks, none of which are shorter than five minutes or longer than eight and all proceed at roughly the same mid-tempo.

The whole things clocks in at around fifty-five minutes, which is probably a touch on the long side. By the time that you get to the final track, which is a something-and-nothing piano instrumental stretched wafer-thin across eight minutes, there is a feeling of exhaustion in the air, a sense that the band collapsed over the finishing line, having only just made it before their metaphorical legs gave way.

All that said, I like this record. I like it more, in fact, than “With a Buzzing..”, but I like it as a whole. None of the tracks here stand out– there is no “Festival” for example. But as an album it manages to conjure up a certain sense of something-or-other which is very attractive if you’re in the right frame of mind.

So, what if this was to be the last Sigur Ros album? I think it would be seen as a bit of a footnote, a gathering together of unreleased material – which it is in any case – and something of an anti-climax.

And if it isn't? Then, it's a stop gap, a pause whilst the band regroups.

From the band's website: “There are rumblings from within the band of a “hard left turn” in terms of what these changes might constitute. Suffice to say, for now it's set to be a compelling "watch this space" scenario.”

Quite.

Either way, “Valtari” doesn’t represent a brave new beginning for Sigur Ros. That is what the next album needs to be, if there is one.