Sigur Rós

Sigur Rós

Hvarf/Heim

(XL Recordings)

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The two discs of Hvarf/Heim sum up what people like and dislike about Sigur Rós, said Alexis Petridis in the London Guardian. For all the Icelandic band’s sonic experimentation and involved orchestration, there’s a slightly formulaic element to the music. Every song seems to “proceed at the same pace,” Jonsi Birgisson’s vocals “always wail, enveloped in reverb,” and “a dramatic surge in volume or a string-augmented climax” always looms ahead. The band’s atmospheric rock intentionally evokes its homeland, said Joshua Klein in Pitchforkmedia.com. To capture its panoptic allure, “otherworldly beauty, grace, and quiet catharsis,” the band’s sound has to be “meticulously composed, recorded, and performed.” Hvarf/Heim, which translates as “disappeared/home,” presents two sides of the group: Hvarf is familiar Sigur Rós, offering unreleased songs from its early days. Heim, the more revealing of the two, is Sigur Rós unplugged, with the band’s “gorgeously sculpted dissonance” recast into “chamber music.” The band has invented a “time, place, and beauty all its own,” said Timothy Finn in The Kansas City Star. With Hvarf/ Heim, the record billows with “thunderous crescendos” and bursts with “dramatic climaxes and rushes of tranquility, quietude, and resolution.” This is “music that blurs the line between sorrow and joy,” an ambient soundscape that only a band that has endured Iceland’s long winters could create.