Sigur Rós -- Kveikur

7/10

Kveikur takes off like a freight train, all rattling percussion and humming guitar. And it just kind of stays there. I have the least to say of, Kveikur, Sigur Rós most previous album, released more than five years ago. Their previous album, Valtari, erred toward atmosphere, and become too unmoored. Who exactly in the band did the drummer piss off? Before Kveikur, they haven't let him play a full kit since the first half of 2008's Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. He's fully unleashed here, but keyboardist, Kjartan Sveinsson, flew the coop before this album was recorded, and the atmosphere left along with him. This essentially leaves Kveikur(Icelandic for fuse) as a sort of monotonous burst of energy. It acts as a counterpart to Valtari, while in truth, the great unmade album here would have been the sound of Kveikur and Valtari combined. They are both distillations of the band's opposite extremes, but Valtari has a bit more depth. Kveikur is the shallowest record Sigur Rós have ever made, and to trash my water metaphor for adhesives, little sticks. Kveikur's inconsequentiality, along with the band's relative silence since, leads me to fear that Sveinsson may have been the driving force behind their sound. After all, the band didn't really take off until he joined, shortly before 1999's landmark, Ágætis byrjun. Maybe they can lure him back?


2013 XL Recordings
1. Brennisteinn 7:45
2. Hrafntinna 6:24
3. Ísjaki 5:04
4. Yfirborð 4:20
5. Stormur 4:56
6. Kveikur 5:56
7. Rafstraumur 4:59
8. Bláþráður 5:13
9. Var 3:45