silence kit #15

Sigur Ros
Agaetis Byrjun [Fat Cat, 2000]

Back to work this week after a month's break, and work sucks. And naturally all this is affecting my writing, or lack of it. But never mind, I’ll still give it a go. Certain songs, albums and musical novelties work better for me riding murder to work daily. REM’s Up holds up pretty well in this context with its sporadic spurts of unease; you wake up in the morning and reluctantly fall out of the bed. At my most miserable, a few of my favorite Okkervil River songs (“On Tour With Zykos”, “Calling and Not Calling My Ex”) keeps popping into my head, Will Sheff’s tired-out voice perfectly replicating the workingman’s exhaustion at the end of the day. Mostly I listen to a lot of Sigur Ros. It’s basically fucked-up nostalgia all over again, reconnecting to the beat that my heart skipped when I first heard this shit. Agaetis Byrjun no longer sound as revelatory these days of course – especially after each of their subsequent releases somewhat reek of nonsensical clairvoyance – but to my unskilled ears eight or nine years ago, the spellbinding, purehearted pop of Sigur Ros conjures up spells of escapism. To the spooked ramparts of an Icelandic wasteland, or something.