Now that the loan period for my sociology text has expired and I’ve been forced to return it to the library, I can finally stop listening to such exorbitant amounts of Sigur Rós. (Sigur Rós, I’ve found, makes the most conducive studying music ever.) It’s not that I have anything against Sigur Rós -- but in the past two weeks, they moved from number 62 to number 9 in my last.fm overall list. And that’s with scrobbling turned off half the time. Granted, I don’t have thousands and thousands of plays on last.fm -- but Sigur Rós songs are not short. Even if they were -- that’s a lot of listening.
However, once freed from the necessity of listening to Sigur Rós in order to concentrate on my homework, I quickly realized that listening to the same band over and over is rather habit-forming, as over the past few days, I have listened to approximately twelve hundred (okay, slight exaggeration) Belle and Sebastian songs. Nothing against them either -- in fact, they’ve always been in my last.fm top ten -- but when I do things like listen exclusively to one or two bands, there’s just so much other stuff I’m ignoring. But that’s just too bad, I guess. Soon I’ll phase out of it again.
For now, despite the fact that Sigur Rós, which was the first Scandinavian band I ever liked -- we go way back, to like… eleventh grade -- and are also probably one of the most internationally recognized Scandinavian bands I like, indicating that they really don’t need the exposure that a little write-up on an even smaller blog will give them, I’m going to talk about Sigur Rós for a while. Or, more specifically, I’m going to talk about Sigur Rós music videos for a while.
I can’t remember when I saw my first one, but it was for the first track from ( ), also known as Vaka. It made a huge impression on me and I went back and watched it frequently for a long time. Its “message,” I feel, is still very strong. I won’t spoil it for you by saying what it’s about -- but it’s quite phenomenal. Well, that’s not quite the right word -- perhaps spændende would be better. (Unfortunately, if you don’t know Danish, that’s of no help to you.)
There’s a very distinct quality to all of Sigur Rós’s videos -- or at least all of those I’ve seen. Aside from the fact that the visuals seem to match perfectly, flawlessly, with the sounds (you can tell someone put in a lot of work, something which, paradoxically, seems to be increasingly rare in music videos), the videos all include a good deal of footage in slow-motion, giving the shots even more of a floaty, ethereal quality. I’m not sure how else to explain it -- but even if I watched one with the sound off, I would know it was a Sigur Rós video. Each one tells a story, too -- a story which is horribly saddening, yet in a happy sort of way.
I have trouble selecting a favorite, but the other one I’ll mention here is that of Hoppípolla. Rather than featuring gorgeous young Icelandic children, the cast is composed entirely of elderly people, and when I say elderly, I don’t just mean older, like your grandparents’ age -- I mean your great-great grandparents’ age. Really old. The thing is, though, they don’t act that way; they run around playing tricks and giggling like children. It’s not out of senility or anything like that; they’re just having fun. It doesn’t seem at all forced and it’s very endearing, and my only hope is that, if I ever live to be old, I’ll be just like they are.
If you visit the media section of Eighteen Seconds Before Sunrise, which seems to be the official Sigur Rós website, you can download literally dozens of videos (planned and live) and songs, including a lot of unreleased live material. There are also a bunch of other things -- for example, a very detailed guide which explains how to properly pronounce Sigur Rós and a variety of other Icelandic things. I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to spend all day looking at these wonderful things, but if you’re in a hurry and just want to download Starálfur, I guess that’s okay too. Or, if you're a last.fm-er, you can listen to several tracks from Von there as well.
--DL--Starálfur (Sigur Rós)
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