Sigur Rós með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust

• Words: Tony Ware
• Label: XL
• XLR8R Rating: /10

If Iceland’s cinematropic collective Sigur Rós were filmmakers, you’d file them between Terrence Malick and François Truffaut. Because on this, the group’s fifth album, translated as “with a buzz in our ears, we play endlessly,” Sigur Rós gravitates between oblique commentaries and a disarmingly near-field realism. Sigur Rós uses half of this new full-length to explore being naturalist auteurs beyond a common axis, capturing more direct address and jumpier cuts. The other, more macroscopic material–including a long pan featuring a 100-piece choir/orchestra–maintains a standard of epic scenes that act as ciphers, saturating listeners with ambiguous emotion.