:: Track Listing

Hvarf
1. Salka
2. Hljómalind
3. Í Gær
4. Von
5. Hafsól

Heim
1. Samskeyti
2. Starálfur
3. Vaka
4. Ágætis Byrjun
5. Heysátan
6. Von


:: Record Review

Sigur Rós

Hvarf/Heim & Heima
(XL; 2007)

Rating: CD: 72% / DVD: 83%%


Sigur Rós are something of an inimitable, even impenetrable, Force; of Nature, of unity, of loyalty, of warmth and shameless melodrama. Take heed, cynics, you're up against bombast typically reserved for icons (and/or Radiohead), and pegging the band for their obligatory theatrics or milquetoast adorableness is paramount to butting heads with a generation of Godspeed-smooching catharsis junkies. Not that criticism isn't valid, because let's get this out of the way: Sigur Rós has been making basically the same music and albums since Agaetis Byrjun (1999), an arsenal of behemoth, visceral cues set to stun and nothing less. Hyperbole and, say, lead vocalist Jonsi's voice go hand in delicate hand; if a song doesn't swell and dominate the hardiest of one's emotions, at least it boils in a shallow rain puddle and then glistens brilliantly, making every Sigur Rós composition a matter of symmetrical deftness. You'll always get what you expect with the band, sure, but that's never been a bad thing. If anything, both Hvarf/Heim and the full-length film Heima crystallize everything obvious and huge about the Icelandic quartet.

Still, the double output, spaced in release by a few months, does little to improve upon the band's variety, instead seeking to impress upon the converted and unaware alike a sense of how important Sigur Rós's live experience is to their recent mythos. Platitudes abound: it's no great shakes to admit that Sigur Rós is something of a personal sensation, partly because their music is so obligatory in its means -- mountainous guitars (sometimes bowed) compete with icy piano and Jon Por Birgisson's Martian falsetto -- and mostly because the warmth of their every move is so universally comforting, acceptable, and humongous. No doubt "glacial" is a reviled way to describe the band: the term's too dependable just as it's entirely applicable, but few words can go as far to demonstrate the sheer weight of their live show so comprehensively. And that's how the releases measure, not in the enthusiasm of original revelation but instead in whole bundles of epilogue insurance.

Heima is plain impressive. It had a couple of things going for it before the cameras even rolled: an accomplished band, a novel tour idea -- the band toured their homeland playing free shows -- and a gorgeous scenic backdrop. Yet one of its greatest successes is how it presents Sigur Rós in a way that is consistent with all other experiences detailing the band, primarily their albums and live concerts -- experiences that carry well-tread rumors or testaments of shaking glut and intense extremes, both in tone and volume. For instance, the waves achieved on the last song of the film, a rendition of "Untitled #8" (aka "Popplagio"), surprisingly equal the song's power on record and in concert. Indeed this band has spent a career attempting to channel elemental grace and innocence, whether through the creation of Hopelandic or through exquisitely patient soundscapes. On the most precious and even precocious level, they try to recapture the magic we often lose touch with as adults: director Dean DeBlois and cinematographer Alan Calzatti's naturalist shots are relentlessly picturesque and idealistic; even drummer Orri admits during one of the film's sparse interview sections to how the band has come to Iceland for the enjoyment of playing shows, that they leave the business and marketing back in America. It's a damning if easy statement on the commercialization of music.

In fact, the only slice of America that we see in this film is a short, experimentally manipulated clip from Sigur Rós's appearance on the Craig Kilborn show. It's not unlike an alienation-inducing scene from Grant Gee's overbearing tour film Meeting People Is Easy (1999), a document of Radiohead's meteoric rise following the release of OK Computer (1997). But unlike that film, the alienation that Radiohead moaned dourly over on long tours through the West is kept to a minimum. The audience is meant to forget America even exists after the Kilborn clip, pitching Heima moreso as immersion in the cultural geography of Iceland. Inhabitants gaze at the band while they play makeshift venues, play at backdoors across the land. Most of the audiences, save for the gig in Reykjavik, don't look like zeitgeist-hip music going types. For a lack of a better description they are normal people, wearing matching Scandinavian wool knit sweaters, soccer jerseys, and ear-snuggling head-gear. Unlike that arty girl who swooned and fell on you when you saw the band inside an old theater in New York, not every one in the film's crowds appears to be having transcendent moments, but most of their facial expressions seem to acknowledge that this band is doing something nakedly beautiful whether it's their bag or not. After all, the shows were free -- why not spend your Sunday afternoon with your nation's most ethereal and popular rock band?

The variations in venue size and band instrumentation are appropriate as the film seems to be addressing how space affects their music, both in reactions to such planned "spontaneous" moments and in the genesis of the compositions themselves. With the band's repeated mentions of the importance of returning to their cut with extensive footage of Iceland's physical miracles and craggy vistas, it's as if they are commanding the notion that Home could be the only muse for their sound. The camera focuses, unblinking, on the majesty of each show's surroundings, lending the viewer a particular sense of unbridled intimacy. One scene in a town meeting hall unfolds with people of all ages arriving to find seats, getting cups of coffee and tea, and eating breakfast breads at nicely but humbly decorated dining tables. Family is mentioned in guileless abandon, the band's touring string quartet, Amina, talked of as sisters and sensational counterparts. No choice but to be sentimental, because why shy from the most empirical ingredients of the domicile, especially when the title means "going home?"

Where the movie is so indelibly married to place that it becomes both a tribute and seemingly hyper-realistic paean to Iceland's arch-beauty, Hvarf/Heim ends up a nebulous corollary, never offering more ambient interest than a barely discernible seagull squawk or notorious purr of crashing waves. Hvarf sits devoted to unreleased material and pre-world-fame re-recordings while Heim is an acoustic gathering of assumed band favorites, bathed in live, acoustic showiness; "Starálfur" and "Ágætis Byrjun" differ only slightly from their meticulously produced earlier versions, imbued with a deeper brand of smoky romance, and "Heysátan" exists to prove that, yes, Sigur Rós are amazing sans electricity and, yes, their patience breathes with whatever earthy backdrop they strive to emulate; so Heim is very nice and also very spare. Less ebulliently cheating with surprise and indulgence is Hvarf, worth the band's typical awe just for the official addition of live staple "Hafsól" to the band's buyable repertoire. It's a sprawling, indecisive masterpiece, furious to grab at rising action like Heima stubbornly asserts the humility of its intent. (Andre: "Í Gær" is the biggest sonic atom bomb they've dropped in awhile. Does it deserve some notice in the review? Maybe. Maybe not. Dom: Maybe.) Once again, the discs make complete sense; everything is in its right place and after two years a proper reminder was in order. But the live albums exert their predictable aesthetic and then wink out, devoid of time and place, intoxicated by manners and modifiers levied at the band since you were in high school.

The populist approach to both the movie and the albums' rustic stubbornness says something vital about Sigur Rós's music: this is a band lopped in with the post-rockers of their heyday but indebted to a regional folk tradition that seeks to aggrandize their music by posturing it of and for the people and not just for a bunch of music critic snobs. The songs rely heavily on strings and few of them turn out to be dependent on amplified instruments. The most important pieces of gear in the whole film are the microphones that catch the purposely disparate sounds of simple pianos, acoustics guitars, organs, strings, and horns. When a marching band joins the band onstage for one encore of "Sé Lest," a Takk. (2005) staple, the footage is spliced illogically with the band marching through a postcard village; altruistically and wisely, Sigur Rós incorporate regional touchstones into their music. Another revealing moment captures Jonsi playing banjo in a dressing room, surrounded by his friends singing some form of Icelandic bluegrass.

All in all, as if there could be any other way, the CD and the DVD are both drop-dead gorgeous, but where the albums breathe their magic into a cultural vacuum, extending into a shapeless, frustrating nowhere, the film revolves around a startling context, inducing the bare beauty of the shots with a firm location, with characters and flesh, allowing the Sigur Rós of yore to seem all the more tangible, real, accessible, and goose-bumpy. It's strange how gorgeous people are set up as almost an effect of gorgeous music, wired into a gorgeous soundscape; gorgeousness reflecting gorgeousness, maybe, leaving little room for anything but total, believable admittance into their sine'd ranks. No surprise that the first performance of the film sends waterfalls and mist backwards, as if the very might of the band's sound can rule the physics of their land. It is their home and they are sharing and protecting it; frankly, that kind of care should not be missed. Andre Perry & Dom Sinacola :: 1 December 2007 |