TAKK...

"Takk..." is like a going out on a date with a girl who tries to look pretty (and probably is). Things seem to go good for a while until you realize she has absolutely no personality, a hellish bore to talk to with nothing to say about anything. She is in fact so boring that you easily see through all of her superficiality and begin to doze off into sleep mid-conversation (or lack thereof), dreaming of a taxi crashing through the restaurant window and whisking you away to somewhere amazing, like a Rush concert.

It was not a good first impression when I literally fell asleep listening to this album the first time through. Now, I feel slightly bad about giving such a bad rating to an album that really tries to make beautiful music, but not really. Sigur Ros throw in all sorts of tinkling bells, pianos and strings to try to make that emotional-thing legitimate or whatever they're going after. They try this epic crescendo thing a lot, something that Godspeed You! Black Emperor pwns at, and it doesn't work here because it just feels forced. All this niceness and beauty defaults into repetition, making a somewhat good song/melody even worse. Bascially the songs drag on too long with little variation. I will say though, this album more dyanamic and interesting than the previous "( )," but that doesn't make it any better. I've also got beef with Jonsi's vocals- they're just whiny and really detract from the music. If they were gone I might like this album a litle more.

Standout songs: "zzzzzzzz...."