*** After the well-earned success of 2005’s Takk (off the back of Planet Earth-soundtracking song ‘Hoppípolla’), many bands would have sought to cement their status with a rushed-out follow-up. Sigur Rós, inscrutable as ever, have instead chosen to release a collection of acoustic recordings and old but in the main previously unrecorded material.Hvarf brings together the odds-and-sods that missed out on album release. It seems fairly clear why this was the case. ‘Salka’ never quite reaches the heights of its live performances, despite an inevitable take-off at the end. ‘Hljomalind’ would not quite have fitted on ( ), and ‘Í Gaer’, while colossal, is rather too close to ‘Untitled #7’ for comfort.Unsurprisingly, the two re-releases fair better. ‘Von’ remains a thing of restrained beauty. ‘Hafsól’, originally on Von but here in its Hoppípolla EP guise, remains the best thing the band have put to record. Building slowly from a tapped bassline, it ascends to incredible heights, before releasing 6 minutes of bottled-up tension and collapsing in a heap of feedback.Heim, meanwhile, sees the band stripping down their sound. Without singer Jónsi Birgisson’s bowed feedback, the songs lose the overpowering, crystalline quality which has been their trademark. Some songs benefit from this sparse arrangement: ‘Starálfur’ in particular is achingly pretty; ‘Von’ filled with barely contained passion. Others, however, miss the woozy head-rush of emotion that characterises their best work. ‘Vaka’, so often a transcendental moment in the band’s live sets, falls flat here, and other cuts are pleasant but ephemeral.
If Takk was seen by many as the band coming in from the cold after the self-consciously bleak ( ), this double-CD (or at least its live disc) seems to be the band removing the veil of mystique which has followed them throughout their career. This seems a shame: so much of their appeal lies in their otherworldly, alien soundscapes, Jónsi’s voice one of (to us) wordless joy, hurt, loss. Perhaps after tying up these loose ends, they can get back to the job of breaking our hearts.By Robin Whelan
Album review: Sigur Ros, Hvarf-Heim
