Sigur Rós - Með Suð í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust (23. June)

[maleneee]

sigur rós will release their fifth lp "með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust" june 23rd worldwide (june 24th in north america). the album will be available to pre-order on sigurros.com on june 2nd and a live stream of the album will be available on june 9th for those who have pre-ordered.

"með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust" was co-produced with the band by renowned producer flood, and was recorded in new york city (at sear sound studios), london (at assault and battery studios and abbey road), reykjavík (at álafoss, the band's studio, as well as a church in reykjavík), and havana, cuba.

the album title is translated into english as "with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly" with the english spelling of the icelandic album title being "med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust"

whereas sigur rós' last release "heima" took the band to their homeland, their newest creation is the first album in the band's career to be made outside of iceland. it is also their first album to feature vocalist jónsi's vocals in english on one track. in addition to the english, one of the album's tracks is sung without lyrics ("hopelandic") and the rest of the tracks are sung in icelandic.

inspired by the unfettered feeling of the acoustic performances filmed during heima, sigur rós decided to adopt a looser approach in the writing and creation of með suð. the material for the album was written, recorded and mixed entirely in 2008 and is being released just one month after its completion. the album glows with the perfect imperfection of live takes, the sounds of fingers playing guitar strings, cracked notes, and a stark, upfront presence not found in previous sigur rós recordings, moving away from reverb-soaked guitar sounds towards something altogether more affecting. the record also contains some of the most joyous music the band has ever recorded.

opener "gobbledigook" sets the tone for með suð í eyrum… with its shifting acoustic guitars, playful vocals, time signature swings and swirling percussion, while "inní mér syngur vitleysingur" ("within me a lunatic sings") sparkles as one of the most anthemic songs sigur rós have ever written. "festival" is epic in its elation and scope, "illgresi" features one of jonsi"s finest vocal melodies over a lone acoustic guitar, and "ára bátur" is the largest musical undertaking in the band's career, as it was recorded live in one take with the london sinfonietta and london oratory boy"s choir, a total of 90 people playing at the same time. the band also utilised the talents of their string-quartet friends amiina, as well as a five-piece brass section on certain tracks.

Tracklist:

1. gobbledigook
2. inní mér syngur vitleysingur
3. góðan daginn
4. við spilum endalaust
5. festival
6. suð í eyrum
7. ára bátur
8. illgresi
9. fljótavík
10. straumnes
11. all alright



http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/band/disco/medsud.php

Free download of the first single, Gobbledigook, at sigurros.com from 9 pm CET today.

[maleneee]

Artwork

http://download.sigur-ros.co.uk/art/medsud_600.jpg

[Kevin McF]

tune up for download

[Rob]

Where?

EDIT: oh, link in first post

[Tim Simmons]

Its light and poppy. makes for a good summer tune. But I don't know if I could like a whole Sigur Ros album like this.

[hold on magnolia]

http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/band/disco/medsud-dot.php

you can stream the album now.

[hildegoat]

Last.FM also has it streaming:

http://www.last.fm/music/Sigur+R%C3%B3s/me%C3%B0+su%C3%B0+%C3%AD+eyrum+vi%C3%B0+spilum+end alaust?autostart

[hildegoat]

Pitchfork liked it. The best quote is
In the sense that they're less concerned with intellectual honesty than they are with the overall visceral impact of the thing they're creating, Sigur Rós are the Michael Bays of melodrama.

Sigur Rós
Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
[XL/EMI; 2008]
Rating: 7.5
In the near-decade since their 1999 breakthrough Ágætis Byrjun, Iceland's Sigur Rós have made pathos their playground. For them, "little" is scarcely an option: Instead, they've built a career out of conjuring God-sized renderings of sorrow, fragility, and teary joy, rarely on a scale anything less than epic. They've done this instinctively and automatically, sometimes to the detriment of their compositions, leaving the impression that the songs are secondary vessels for spectacle. In the sense that they're less concerned with intellectual honesty than they are with the overall visceral impact of the thing they're creating, Sigur Rós are the Michael Bays of melodrama.

That, of course, is no bad thing-- especially not for a band that does spectacle so well-- but it does invite a problematic dynamic when it comes to the long haul, one wherein they run the very real risk of piling on ever-more ludicrously for the sake of justifying their existence. That's why, after four full-lengths and a string of EPs that saw them bloat their sensory cavalcade of strings, horns, cavernously reverberated guitars, and sweetly vocals to Heaven-scraping levels of pomp, last month's single "Gobbledigook" came as a refreshing and shockingly grounded new direction. Gone were the celestial delays and cloud-parting refrains; in their place, a tangle of acoustic guitars, thumping percussion, and rabid vocals. Not only did it sound like Sigur Rós doing Animal Collective (!), it sounded like a way out.

And certainly, about half of Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (translation: "With a buzz in our ears we play endlessly") constitutes a much-needed change of direction for Sigur Rós. Building on the gains made from 2005's transitional Takk, they deliver plenty of moments where they sound more spirited, looser, almost playful. The unifying element in these instances is brevity; from the tumbling, modest solo acoustic ballad "Illgresi" to the celebratory "Við spilum endalaust", some of the band's best songs come when they consciously confine themselves to the pop format. You get the feeling that, on a past album, they might have let "Góðan daginn"'s acoustic guitar arpeggios and chiming bell tones waft around interminably. Similarly, one of the album's highlights is a major key summer song called "Inní mér syngur vitleysingur" which manages to squeeze some of the band's hallmarks (parading horns, glockenspiels, and a stunning teardown and subsequent buildup) into a positively economical four minutes. The compression generally serves them well, forcing them to make choices they might not otherwise confront when there's 10 minutes of real estate to occupy.

Með suð was produced by Flood (U2, PJ Harvey, Nine Inch Nails) and recorded, variously, in New York, London, Reykjavik, and Havana, a sure sign of a conscious attempt to shake up their methodology. If there's anything disappointing, it's that Sigur Rós weren't more militant about affecting that change. While the album's greatest triumph is its relative leanness, two songs still threaten the nine-minute mark. The first is the conflicting "Festival", which features singer Jonsi Birgisson doing his quavering choirboy routine over a churchly organ for an interminable four and a half minutes before swelling into an instrumental eruption on par with Sigur Rós' finest ever. It's so arresting and muscular on its own that it hardly needs the first bit to introduce it; that the band chose needlessly to build it into a beast feels a bit like old habits dying hard. Far more unforgivable is the comically overstuffed "Ára bátur", which is a bet-hedging and nerveless exercise that bridges another aimless solo piano movement with a culminating swell so over-the-top that Andrew Lloyd Webber himself would have deemed it a little much. That the album's official bio proudly touts the 90-strong recording (which boasts both the London Sinfonietta and the London Oratory Boys' Choir) as "the largest musical undertaking of the band's career"-- and that it's easily the worst thing on here-- speaks volumes of a different kind.

These safe, pandering choices otherwise mar what could have been a game-changing evolution. Instead, Með suð promisingly announces itself as a sunny, happy, easily digestible record before relapsing into old school, heavy-bloat, high-calorie Sigur Rós. Ultimately, there are too many wonderful moments here to deem it anything less than a beautiful record, but armchair producers might find themselves similarly wishing for less fat. How do you say "less is more" in Hopelandic? I worry we'll never know.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/51478-me-su-eyrum-vi-spilum-endalaust

[hildegoat]

The A.V. Club likes it too:
By removing a key element of their sound and not allowing themselves their usual cooked-to-perfection studio time, the members of Iceland's most majestic, respected, and popular band has issued itself a serious challenge. On album number five, Sigur Rós has basically ditched the bowed electric guitar sound that helped define them for years. The songs have quieted considerably, and scratchy surfaces have arisen that weren't there before. That news might give diehards—a surprisingly large group for a non-English speaking band specializing in lofty orchestral rock—reason for worry, but it shouldn't. Sigur Ros make perfect music—they're just doing it a little differently on Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (translation: "with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly").

Sigur Rós gave devotees further reason to worry with the early release of album opener "Gobbledigook," the least Sigur Rós -like track of its career: It's unusually reliant on acoustic guitar, it chugs along instead of floating, and it sounds hurried instead of carefully measured. (It also sounds remarkably like latter-day Radiohead, but with organic hum and strum replacing insistent electro-clicks.) An album full of these might've been too jarring, but it segues quickly into a sun-bursting-through-the-clouds epic, "Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur," to set things right. "Vid Spilum Endalaust" is similarly joyous, with horns and strings providing the foundation that Jonsi Birgisson's guitar usually does. "Med Sud í Eyrum" will have fans of the sadder, more contemplative third album ( ) in thrall with its hypnotically downcast rhythm and vocal melody.

Those sides—the sunburst and raincloud sides—meet in the massive "Ára Bátur," which begins with simple piano and voice, content to luxuriate in Birgisson's beautiful voice for five minutes before bringing in the London Sinfonietta and London Oratory Boy's Choir to add a massive emotional swell. At its peak, it hews a little too close to a Hollywood soundtrack—expect Julia Roberts to come rushing through the door—but it's tempered by the band's affection for left turns. Plus, it offers a peak for the album's final songs to come down from: There's intimate and gorgeous (the acoustic-and-voice "Illgresi" and the orchestra-and-voice "Fljótavík"), a bit of instrumental palate cleanser ("Straumnes"), and finally the band's first track sung in English, "All Alright," whose strings, muted horns, and slurred vocals retain plenty of mystery despite the lack of language barrier. It's a gorgeous descent for an inimitable group that knows better than most how to deliver its highs high and its lows low.

A.V. Club Rating: A

http://www.avclub.com/content/music/sigur_ros_0

[taparoo]

Bought this album a few days ago and love it. :upyours