Though most of the album will still be sung in Icelandic - the first track is tellingly called Gobbledigook - the final song is in the Queen's English, albeit, presumably, yowled, stretched, and turned into a magical fairy psalm.
The album will be called Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust. Just in case you've already thrown out those dictionaries, Sigur R�s translate the title as "with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly". Which is what Sigur R�s sceptics have been complaining about for years.
Gobbledigook, the lead single, is available now as a free download, as is the music video. It features lots of handclaps, guitar strums, and frolicking naked people. (And it's definitely not safe for work.)
The album was recorded not just in Sigur R�s' �lafoss studio, but also abroad - in London, New York, and the very un-Icelandic Havana, Cuba. String quartet Amiina loaned their talents, as did a five-piece brass section. But it's on a song called �ra B�tur that the band had the most help. The track was recorded in a single live take, with the participation of the London Sinfonietta and the London Oratory Boys' Choir - with more than 90 musicians joined in creating a rapturous racket.
The band's Jon Thor Birgisson has traditionally sung in either Icelandic or a made-up gibberish language called Hopelandic. This means that for most of us, the band's lyrics have been incomprehensible - high, beautiful glossolalia over bowed guitars and thundering drums. We've had the luxury of imagining these lyrics as the most insightful poetry we've ever had the pleasure to not understand.
But all that will end in June, when we hear All Alright, the LP's closing, English-language song. Its title does not exactly inspire confidence, it being more evocative of a Coldplay B-side than of a lost Rilke sonnet.
Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust will be released on June 23 by EMI. Pre-orders begin on June 2, including a deluxe edition with book and making-of film.
Tracklist:
1 Gobbledigook
2 Inn� m�r syngur vitleysingur
3 G� an daginn
4 Vi spilum endalaust
5 Festival
6 Me su � eyrum
7 �ra b�tur
8 Illgresi
9 Flj�tav�k
10 Straumnes
11 All Alright
See Also
