It was last Thursday when Sigur Ros announced, (almost) by surprise, that their new work would be available on digital platforms the next day –for the physical format we will have to wait until September 1–, only three days after the group made the song public “Blood Rock” and confirming that it was finally a single taken from the reference in question. “EIGHT” is the first album by the highly reputable Icelandic group in a decade and which, in turn, picks up the witness of “On” (XL Recordings, 13) with the intention of presenting a particularly introspective and spectral version of its authors. The eighth studio album by those from Reykjavík manifests itself, in effect, as an obsessively meditated album and, of course, far from any kind of immediacy, which extends itself with neatness and classicism to turn its own essence upside down and sound disturbingly contemporary and groundbreaking. .
During “EIGHT”, Jónsi, Georg Hólm and Kjartan Sveinsson seem like ethereal beings from another planet, who manifest themselves through their extreme sensitivity and through siren songs suggested among hypnotic textures. An LP alternated between images of extreme fragility (in which with great difficulty they manage not to break completely) and those that consciously enhance their intensity, with a messianic breaking point that sheds hope on that hungry reality in which it manifests itself. A treatise that, ultimately, leads to catharsis, pointing to an almost religious experience based on the respect and solemnity projected by each and every one of its nearly sixty-minute duration.
The trio approaches that specific beauty that, with the appearance of a song, fosters unconventional emotions capable of shaking souls. It is, in fact, a specific type known since the formation burst onto the scene at the end of the nineties. A formula that seems inimitable, at least if the objective lies in the heartbreaking consequences that follow one another before the work of the Scandinavians, monopolizing parallel dimensions starring randomly post-rock, ambient, avant-garde or dream-pop. They are the sequels left by the film “Big”the baroque of “Rock” and its endless explosion, “Slam”the aforementioned single “Blood Rock”, or that final and determining stretch made up of “Ylur”, “Fall” y “8”.
Sigur Ros Without paying attention to the consequences and throughout ten songs, they affect their peculiarities, with a mostly introspective pulse –at times almost intoxicatingly comatose– topping off with carefully erect nerve spikes and likewise handling silences that, in some cases, are essential. “EIGHT” it is the white light at the end of the tunnel; the soundtrack that peacefully guides the last steps of a redeemed life, heading down the corridor towards a world of calm and serenity. Letting yourself be swallowed up by Jónsi’s interpretation and the passages drawn by the combo is, once again, an esoteric experience that, considering its consequences and exclusivities, reconfirms Sigur Rós as one of the definitively relevant bands. Because it is personal and imaginative, but above all because his music will continue to heal and, therefore, it will not go out of fashion to which it has never belonged.