Sigur Ros

Sigur Ros - Hvarf and Heim

This is the first year I feel no more intelligent than I did the year before.

I've always prided myself on my knowledge, intellect and wit, but this year I feel that I haven't grown as a person. Perhaps this hangs on moving back to Minnesota; perhaps this is due to a third year of being in transitionary point in my life- but somewhere the smarts were lost.

In a way, I appreciate that this may be due to lack of stimulants I surround myself with; a condition based in no small part on the frigid cold. I am well aware there are options afforded to me here that I choose not to take advantage of. However, no matter the intellectual books that I consume nor the writing that I do I am not bettering myself.

My Mom celebrated her fifty-eighth birthday two weekends ago and I made her a Harry Potter meal complete with Quidditch Players Pie (okay), treacle tart (didn't work), liquorice wands (pretty good), Hogwarts Pastry Puff (not in the book, but wicked good) and butterbeer (to be avoided).

It was a fine day. Friends, family and copius amounts of wine. Throughout it all I had Sigur Ros' new double album Hvarf and Heim on. It paired perfect with cooking, the heavy clumps of snow falling from the sky and relaxation.

Sigur Ros is a fine band; some of their music is as beautiful as I've ever heard. In many ways they are a band that should be compared to classical music more so than any rock and roll or electronica; sweet symphonies that bring the listener to appreciate more and augment the circumstance that they find themselves in.

That said, they are also a difficult band to make it through an entire album of. The viscosity of movement in their songs makes it difficult to listen to an entire 60 to 70 minutes as the moments that they help describe change at a more rapid pace.

Taken in small doses such songs as the reworked live Staralfur and Vaka sound stark and beautiful. Likewise the movie like fairy sounds that begin and conclude I Gaer work very nicely. However, the entire album is likened to French Silk pie; something that is so incredibly delicious but impossible to eat more than one slice.