( )

My first experience with Sigur Ros was suffice to say; not an impressive one. 'Takk...' and it's incessant optimism left a sour taste in my mouth, and turned me off from further exploring the band's music. Luckily, I found this record at discount lying around and having heard it was much different from the one I'd already heard before, I picked it up.

I have to say, while there are some things about Sigur Ros that irritate me still, the cleverly named '( )' has opened this band up to a new listener. Instead of getting the 'progressive chipmunk' treatment, there is alot of depth here, and a penchant for melancholic emotion that I've rarely heard trumped.

The band has implied before that the reason the work is titled so cryptically and it's song titles are (originally) without names is to let the listener come up with their own idea of what the album is all about. This lends a very personal experience for the album, and due to the fact that the lyrics are all sung in a fictional, non-sensical language, it truly is completely at the listeners discretion.

The album is broken into two halves; the first being lighter and more melodic and the second half being much darker in nature and more drawn out. While the first half is certainly more memorable than the second (in no small part due to the fact that I listen to it a good deal more,) the second half seems to have more going on in the music, and a more 'epic' feel to it. A good twenty second silence in between the two sides really gives the impression that the band means for this to be an album listened to on vinyl, which -considering the sonic depth- makes perfect sense.

The main focus here is atmosphere, and ambience. The songwriting itself is here (and quite strong at that) but '( )' would be nothing without it's masterful execution. Each note and timbre played here seems right for it's particular job in creating an atmosphere, although the lack of real dynamic can get boring at times. Sonically speaking '( )' is perfect; with the exception of a few overly shrill vocal sections at the hand of frontman Jonsi. With a little more range and variance here, this album would really be one of the crowning achievements in modern music.

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