Sigur Rós -- Hvarf/Heim

8/10

Hvarf/Heim marks a turning point in Sigur Rós' career. Their output for the previous ten years featured a gargantuan, yet mysterious, alien power. With 2005's Takk..., the band proved they could be more accessible, though they still seemed to be beaming their music down from the heavens. Hvarf/Heim finally brings the band down to Earth, with feet on solid ground. Admittedly, while I prefer the unfathomable Sigur Rós to the knowable one, Hvarf/Heim is a special, intimate release.
With that said, this album is essentially two very musically different EP's that conjure similar vibes. The first, Hvarf, features five previously unreleased studio recordings, and is essentially the band emptying out the cupboard before they move on to some new ingredients. The standout among these five songs is "Hljómalind," the most immediate thing the band had recorded to that point. "Hljómalind" doles out the twinkly buildup the band were famous for for only 90-seconds before a huge chorus explodes, like a massive, tree-lined cliff rising out of a gray, glistening ocean.

Hvarf also includes a nice re-recording of "Von," from the band's debut album of the same name, and a proper release of the giddily building "Hafsól," which was previously only a single b-side. The other two tracks, "Salka" and "Í Gær," while decent, are both clearly songs that weren't quite strong enough to make it on any of the band's previous studio albums (excluding the weak Von). The aforementioned "Hafsól" closes out Hvarf on an extremely positive vibe, with a hyper-active whistle announcing its departure.
The band then change gears drastically with Heim, which takes five of the bands previous, hugely alien sounding songs, and deconstructs them with acoustic instruments. These versions are taken from Heima, a DVD documentary full of interesting live performances, which the band released concurrently with this album. All things together, late 2007 was a monumental moment for the band, as they went from vastly unknowable entity to organic humanity. The next five years of their music would be hugely influenced by this change. These restful versions of these once massively sounding songs are incredibly comforting, something the band clearly recognize, as Heim is Icelandic for "home." That these songs are still so enjoyable with such vastly different instrumentation is a testament to Sigur Rós' songwriting talents.
Overall, Hvarf/Heim is a document of a band thankful to its fans and its previous sound for its past successes, and looking toward a future of growth and change--but before that growth and change, a peaceful meditation.
As for me, at this point in human history, I was just about to complete a full year of marriage. I talked in a previous review about how codependent I had been at the start of that relationship, but thankfully, the second half of 2007 saw me finding some independence and making more room for myself (and here's another reflection on that time, minus six years' additional wisdom).
This album came at the perfect time for me, with "Hljómalind" both amping me up and comforting me at the same moment. For our first anniversary, after an excruciatingly tough year, my wife and I went to a very nice restaurant, with some cash I'd saved from my second job. I didn't realize one of my good friends at the time worked there, and he offered us a free dessert, which was great, as rather ironically, the piece of cake we'd thawed out from our wedding hadn't held up too well. However, when it came time to pay the check, my friend announced that someone else had called the restaurant and had already taken care of the entire thing. My wife and I stumbled back to my car in disbelief. Heim started up along with my Sentra, and the strings from "Von" peacefully announced themselves. Suddenly, my wife broke into deep heaving sobs of happiness. Not only had we been given the grace to survive that first dreadful year, but now the mounting generosity of others was just too much. Her sobs soon turned to laughter as we hugged in the car, drove to the nearby Blockbuster (RIP, Blockbuster), rented Stardust, and watched it under the multi-colored lights of our two-foot tall, fiber-optic Christmas tree, in our darkened, 500 square-foot mid-city apartment. Those were the days.


Hvarf
1. Salka 6:09
2. Hljómalind 4:56
3. Í Gær 6:26
4. Von 9:15
5. Hafsól 9:46

Heim
1. Samskeyti (Heim Version) 5:23
2. Starálfur (Heim Version) 5:28
3. Vaka (Heim Version) 5:20
4. Ágætis byrjun (Heim Version) 6:36
5. Heysátan (Heim Version) 4:43
6. Von (Heim Version) 8:14