Laying in bed in the middle of night after some 'me time' is a weird time to be hearing a song like this for the first time, and that could be warping my perception, but I have to say: great!
haha ok I knew it was stated on the 18 seconds... website (which hasn't always been the official website), and I haven't read every single interview, but they answer the question about hopelandic veery often with the answer: this was something journalists made up. And I know they think the whole defenition of this ''language'' and that the use of the hopelandic name is very silly. And I know that they don't start band practice saying ok guys let's sing in hopelandic because that's our thing.
Sigur Rós have talked to much about this so I thought Stereogum would be in on this and would not use the word. But I'm just a fanboy, I probably sound like a douchebag, and this is probably all very inappropriate, downvote as you like.
Cool you're going to Iceland Airwaves ! If you're looking for a party, you're always welcome to my place. I live in downtown Reykjavík and there'll probably be parties here non-stop during the festival since I live almost in the middle of the venues for the festival..
I hope I'm not ruining anyones vision of the album and the tracks, since Sigur Rós wanted people to make their own stories and thoughts about the tracks as they listened to them, and write them in the empty pages of the booklet) but here are the titles they made themselves for the tracks from the album:
1. Vaka (the name of Orri's new born (at the time) daughter)
2. Fyrsta (means ''the first'', maybe the first song they wrote for the album?)
3. Samskeyti (means ''joint'' or ''seam''. Maybe for the connection between two songs or summin?)
4. Njósnavélin (the spy machine)
5. Álafoss (the place where their former recording studio 'sundlaugin' (the swimming pool) is)
6. E-bow (...)
7. Dauðalagið (the death song)
8. Popplagið (the pop song)
And the name of the album in icelandic (and the translation of ''the bracket album) is ''Svigaplatan''
Maybe most of you already know these titles, I just thought somebody had to post them here :)
They always use these titles on their set-lists.
This album is definitely their coldest and darkest album (I always group their albums in the seasons, so this is obviously the winter album :)) but they hate it when people try to define their albums. For an example an icelandic music journalist published an article in the biggest newspaper in iceland, Morgunblaðið, about their career, with a huge linear graph showing their high and low points, and this album was their lowest point in their career, according to the graph. The band was furious about this and their answer was published some days later.
I hope they're playing some tracks of this album on the current tour, I was fucking stoked when they played E-bow on the Með suð í eyrum.. tour. It fit perfectly in that set. However I think they've definitely overplayed Untitled #8 - Popplagið. I was specially sick of it when they played an otherwise fucking awesome set at the outdoors Nature concert held on a field in Reykjavík in Iceland. It was one of the first time they played the songs of Með suð í eyrum.. and they were all so happy and uplifting songs, something nobody expected (Björk even joined the on stage for Gobledigook), and it was just a short set (8 songs or something), but then they ended with popplagið which was a huge bonerkill (yes, I said bonerkill).
I'm really excited for their concert next sunday here in iceland at Iceland Airwaves. Really excited to see if Kjartan (the keyboard player) is going to show up and which songs they are going to play, since the new album doesn't really fit with the ''best of'' songs.
Oh and Chris, pleeease don't write 'Hopelandic'. Haha no offense, but I thought that this site would be one of the few that knew better than doing that :D
Hopelandic is a name some journalists made up to simplify this concept of them singing just what fits to the music. It's not a compilation of many languages or anything, but sometime I can hear bits of icelandic words here and there. But Björk has also done this a lot in the past but nobody calls that hopelandic. You can very often here her singing bits of icelandic words in those moments.
Otherwise very good article ! I'm always happy seeing how much respect they have outside of iceland. They're not really that popular here in iceland, their concert next sunday isn't even sold out, but that's probably because everyone thinks they have to have an iceland airwaves pass to get in (which they don't, it just gives you a discount).
Hahaha you wanna hear the most popular music in iceland right now ?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnG4pn0jXk4
Sigur Rós are sooo unpopular here, they are actually even made fun of sometimes. The only reason their music charts here are all the tourists buying the albums.
This is the album I expected after Takk...
A further exploration of the ambient floaty sound they incorporated so much in Takk... for the first time.
But then they went in the completely other direction and made the best album in their career, með suð í eyrum....
I feel like this is the same style as in the Riceboy Sleeps album, but that's just a first listen assumption.
Looking forward to the whole album and seeing how it's gonna be live !
Also: WHY no Björk ? Mabey you guys needed to see Biophilia live to fully experience it and get the concept, but didn't Scott and Amrit see it during Iceland Airwaves ?
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