introducing… more of the best bands you’ve never heard of
Here’s how you know a band/album/song is completely off the mainstream radar: nobody who writes about it seems to know how to spell it. Most people have gotten the band name of Sigur R¢s right, but their album Ag‘tis Byrjun gets mangled by writers worldwide (the best my spellchecker can come up with is “Agate Bruno”). Allmusic.com even spells their single “Svefn-G-Englar” two different ways on the same page.
I find it disappionting that Sigur R¢s is getting an “art-rock” label from some critics here and there, simply because I think their sound deserves the invention of a new word to describe it. Hammy, Carlin and I are debating the merits of “space-elf-caramel,” “pulsar-meringue-bliss,” and “noodles.” But there is only one phrase to describe the seamless four-song stretch that ends the album, spoken in the voice of the Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy: “Best seamless four-song stretch to end an album.ever.”
The following is not a joke: Ag‘tis Byrjun, released in 1999, was voted by a panel of 108 “experts” as the best Icelandic record of the twentieth century. Wow. I mean, between Bjork and.well, Bjork.um.I guess it’s quite an honor to be picked over Bjork, is what I’m trying to say.
Postscript: The Onion has a great headline this week: “Dog Keeps Iceland Awake All Night.” If I had more space to try to fill here, I would have stretched the metaphor of Sigur R¢s as that dog. But I’m over the limit already as it is.
- Taylor Upchurch
Recommended listening:
“Svenf-G-Englar” “Olsen Olsen” “Agaetis Bryjun”
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