Ágætis Byrjun

1	Intro 1:36
2	Svefn-G-Englar 10:04
3	Starálfur 6:46
4	Flugufrelsarinn 7:48
5	Ný Batterí 8:10
6	Hjartaõ Hamast (Bamm Bamm Bamm) 7:10
7	Viõrar Vel Til Loftárasa 10:17
8	Olsen Olsen 8:03
9	Ágaetis Byrjun 7:55
10	Avalon 4:02

Barnes & Noble

The U.S. debut from Icelandic group Sigur Rós (Victory Rose) is a quiet stunner, a haunting 72 minutes of cobwebbed guitars, wistful vocals, and sluggish rhythms that belie the songs' sonic complexity. In 2000, the quartet received universally glowing U.S. press for the disc -- from Rolling Stone, Spin, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Alternative Press, among others -- despite the fact that Ágætis Byrjun (A Fine Beginning) was only sporadically available. A deal through MCA remedies the drought on our shores, and now Sigur Rós is in full bloom. What's snagged all the attention is the group's striking sound, a blast of Nordic cool as bracing, original, and graceful as the Cocteau Twins' arrival in their day. Followers of the Cocteaus were categorized under "dream pop," and present-day cousins to Sigur Rós (who've certainly learned from the Cocteaus), such as Mercury Rev, Mogwai, and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, are often labeled "post rock," on account of their penchant for challenging the confines of rock 'n' roll, even as they marvel at the power of the electric guitar. For their part, Sigur Rós allow their songs to develop slowly, rarely picking up the pace past a trot, and layer sheets of distorted guitars, organ tones, glowing brass work, and glistening strings into something as rich and fragile as a puff pastry. And to English-bred ears, singer/guitarist Jón Thór Birgisson's vocals -- a combination of Icelandic and made-up sounds he's dubbed Hopelandic -- make the proceedings even more remote and outlandish; his androgynous-sounding coos and wails become just another element in the overall tone poem, imparting a sense of yearning and loneliness without any drippy clichés. So listen up, because the sound of young Reykjavik has arrived on our continent, and it's utterly dazzling. Lydia Vanderloo

All Music Guide

Two years passed since Sigur Rós' debut. By this time, the band recruited in a new keyboardist by the name of Kjartan Sveinsson and it seems to have done nothing but take the band to an even higher state of self-awareness. Even on aesthetic matters, Sigur Rós entitle their sophomore effort not in a manner to play up the irony of high expectations (à la the Stone Roses' Second Coming), but in a modest realization. This second album -- Ágætis Byrjun -- translates roughly to Good Start. So as talented as Von might have been, this time out is probably even more worthy of dramatic debut expectations. Indeed, Ágætis Byrjun pulls no punches from the start. After an introduction just this side of one of the aforementioned Stone Roses' backward beauties, the album pumps in the morning mist with "Sven-G-Englar" -- a song of such accomplished gorgeousness that one wonders why such a tiny country as Iceland can musically outperform entire continents in just a few short minutes. The rest of this full-length follows such similar quality. Extremely deep strings underpin falsetto wails from the mournfully epic ("Viðar Vel Tl Loftárasa") to the unreservedly cinematic ("Avalon"). One will constantly be waiting to hear what fascinating turns such complex musicianship will take at a moment's notice. At its best, the album seems to accomplish everything lagging post-shoegazers like Spiritualized or Chapterhouse once promised. However, at its worst, the album sometimes slides into an almost overkill of sonic structures. Take "Hjartað Hamast (Bamm Bamm Bamm)," for instance: there are so many layers of heavy strings, dense atmospherics, and fading vocals that it becomes an ineffectual mess of styles over style. As expected, though, the band's keen sense of Sturm und Drang is mostly contained within an elegant scope of melodies for the remainder of this follow-up. Rarely has a sophomore effort sounded this thick and surprising. Which means that "Good Start" might as well become of the most charming understatements to come out of a band in years. ~ Dean Carlson, All Music Guide

CMJ New Music Report

Led by Jon Pór Birgisson's airy, almost genderless (and often wordless) moan, Sigur Rós deploys its somber lullabies with symphonic grandeur, stretching out its arching melodies, building tonal and emotional colors around them, and eventually conceding to a perfectly timed fade to black. It doesn't get much more sublime than this. Colin Helms

NME

Dreamy beyond belief, this, Sigur Ros's second album (the title, roughly translated, means 'A New Beginning'), explores further the band's predilection for non-narrative beauty. Waves of unidentifiable noise, dulcet vibraphone pulses and singer/guitarist Jonsi's ethereal singing (more like some ghostly instrument than any conventional vocal, borne out by Jonsi's fictional 'language', Hopelandish, which he often sings in) mesh to create an elegant, grand music that's equally ambient and epic....This feels like church music, eschewing the sonic cathedrals of shoegazing infamy in favour of music that feels as awesome, as extravagantly bejeweled as, say, the Sacre Coeur.