It’s the same story I’ve told in the posts for ‘Olsen Olsen’, and ‘Starálfur’ not too long ago. August 2018, I was feeling sad. I went into work, put on Sigur Rós’s Ágætis byrjun on Spotify, let that album play out loud on the speakers because it was a job I was the only one who was in the “office” most of the time, and found myself entranced by its beauty. Sigur Rós were a group I’d been aware of since at least 2005, when Takk… was the new album that was going to be released. The video for ‘Glósóli’ aired as an exclusive on MTV2. I had no idea what was going on in it. Then ‘Hoppípolla’ was released as a single, and its video was shown on the channel what felt like every day for a time there in 2006. I was only ten years of age, but there were a couple things I gathered from Sigur Rós then. One, their songs were in a language I did not understand. And two, the music sounded nice at least. But I wasn’t wowed enough, as much as a ten-year-old could be, to go on a Sigur Rós listening spree. I was more into Green Day or Billy Talent at the time. Going through the punk phase.

But 2018 was the time to finally check out a Sigur Rós album. I can’t remember what made me do it. I think I watched a video of the band playing ‘Olsen Olsen’ live. But I also think it was listed as the best album of 1999 on besteveralbums.com. Had a ribbon next to its rating and everything. That website had never let me down, as any avid reader of this blog may know. ‘Svefn-g-englar’ is the first proper track of Ágætis byrjun, though the sonar pinging (as I’ve come to recognise it) that happens throughout is foreshadowed in the album’s intro before it. You can’t go wrong listening to both together. ‘Svefn…’ slowly builds as it goes along. Those two notes on the organ and the sonar ping are what the entire track is hooked on. They’re joined by a deep bass note that hits you in your inner core. The drums come in. The stage is set. But nothing prepares you for that almighty swooping, whale-song noise produced by the bowed guitar playing by Jónsi. With some good speakers, the combination of it all takes you to another dimension. If you were able to hear music in the depths of an ocean, or at least if there was a documentary about sea wildlife, this would be the song to perfectly capture the scene.

And looking at a translation, it appears that song does take place in an ocean of some kind. If you were to consider the womb an ocean in a metaphorical kind of way. The narrator here is a baby waiting in the womb, all peaceful in the amniotic fluid, before being birthed and breastfed by the sleeping angels (the ‘svefn-g-englar’) of the mother and, I think, the doctors. The track follows your standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-outro kind of structure, but stretched out to over nine minutes in length, allowing the music to breathe and thrive in the expansive spaces. Damn, Jónsi’s vocal on this track. Could make a grown man cry. With his delicate high-pitch, it’s like a mother singing her baby to sleep, which I think is meant to be the obvious point of it all. The ‘Tjúúúúúúú’ chorus melody won’t leave your head, not just because of how many times it’s repeated. It’s also beautifully delivered every time. And one thing I want to point out is how there seems to be a glockenspiel or xylophone that gets introduced into the mix, which pans from the right ear to the left and work perfectly in rhythm with the sonar ping that hits right in the centre. A neat production trick that gets my eyes darting everywhere. A little aside there. I try not to describe things as ‘epic’ because I think calling things that was ran into the ground in about 2010. But this track is definitely a synonym of that. Let’s say ‘extraordinary’.