Valtari, Nate

Sigur Ros (apologies to whichever punctuation is supposed to go there, I will not be adding it, and I formally request that the editor also not add it in later, leaving it out is part of my creative process, Love It or Leave It, Freedom Fries, USA, speak damn American when I'm in America, MAHA / MAGA / MIGA, build a wall around Iceland, what about Jonsi's emails, and so forth) is simply the best to ever do it. 

The organizing principle of most post-rock is, essentially, to make high-gloss, high-cost mood music. Though, as I start to analyze that sentence, I wonder if there is any material difference between "post-rock" and music in general. Surely all art is meant to convey a "mood," isn't it, if you expand the concept of "mood" to "emotion" or "feeling?" Even art with an overt message—say, this anti-Trump Dropkick Murphys song (which, as you can see from above, I think is awful, I will be burning all of my camo Dropkick Murphys gear, pouring out all of the Dropkick Murphys beer I assume they brewed and I purchased, and smashing my several vinyl copies of The Gang's All Here)—brings a perspective to it, and that perspective is informed by reaction. There is no such thing as pure objectivity in human creation, since humans do not live in a vacuum. Might be interesting to see what a human living in a vacuum created as their expression, assuming the concepts of "creation" and "expression" are innate traits and not learned social behaviors. That fictional human might well come up with what Sigur Ros does (DO NOT ADD THE PUNCTUATION, GODDAMN YOU).

Alright, time for the dreaded "I" statements.

I find it hard to write about Sigur Ros. I feel the urge to reach for my bag of adjectives. I summon ideas like "whale song," "ethereal," orchestral," "magical," "elven," "extra-terrestrial," "classical," "pastoral," "accidental," "glacial," "ethereal" again, one more time for good measure, "gorgeous," "longing," "eternal," "elemental." I struggle with what I understand is happening—which is, usually, someone with a very high and very pretty voice is singing drawn out syllables over a piano—against what feel hearing it, which is that everyone I've ever loved is thinking of me all at the same time. I sit with that feeling and try to get my head around the heartrending, soul-obliterating idea of being loved by all, of having that invisible force sent into me, and back out from me into a connected network of souls, all eyes seen, all hands held. It seems unfair to put that kind of fictional power on to a bunch of bearded artists from Reykjavík. It seems impossible that they could conjure something like that out of mundane instruments and a language I don't understand. I know that music is not a magic trick. And yet there are doves everywhere.

Every Sigur Ros album has a moment Where the Strings Come In and it is invariably the best moment of the record. Here it happens on "Varuo" (I swear to God if you put the punctuation in here I am going to have Kash Patel send S.W.A.T. teams to every orphanage in Shreveport and have Pam Bondi drain all the groundwater), and it makes me want to cry. Not for any specific emotional reason, more just a physical reaction that I can assign a feeling to after the tears have already stained my Ridge Donuts shirt (they truly are Rochester's best donuts). 

I can never stick around with Sigur Ros for too long. They would be my favorite band if not for the fact that every record runs me through the same cycle of elevation and obliteration. I feel wrung out listening to this record, and after a couple of days, I go right back into it. I will try, like I have with all their records, to find the bottom of it. I will find, inevitably, that there is no bottom. 

It's so awful out there right now. This week, it's been so beautiful out there, too. All of this will pass us, pass our loved ones, pass our species, and something beautiful will grow. It's not a comfort. It's the truth. And in that truth, there's peace.