I heard Sigur Rós’ 1999 album Ágætis byrjun, the second in their discography, in late August of 2018. A time when I wasn’t feeling good at all, pretty miserable, it wasn’t the greatest period personally. But the album acted as something of an aid just because of how genuinely stunning it was. There are a lot of beautiful moments throughout, expansive, majestic, astounding, while also maintaining a warmth and intimacy about it. Listened through the loudspeakers at my old workplace and was convinced enough that I went home and downloaded it on my laptop not too long after. And the album starts off strong too, with the one-two punch of ‘Svefn-g-englar’ (really the second song after the album’s intro, but it may as well be one long thing) and the featured track for today, ‘Starálfur’.

If there are potentially any musicians out there reading this, wanting to make a song with a very nice sounding string section, I would suggest using ‘Starálfur’ as the reference. The track relies heavily on these string parts, and when a guitar dares to enter the frame, it sounds like it’s being played through a tiny, tiny speaker in a moment of stillness before the strings take over again. The song’s lyrics are in Icelandic. I’ll attempt in singing along to them, but I’m sure I’m getting the pronunciation all wrong. Translated to English, the song’s title is ‘Staring Elf’, and vocalist Jónsi Birgisson sings about going to bed after a long day and suddenly seeing this supernatural creature looking right back at him. The elf takes the shape of Jónsi’s body. He’s stunned by the whole event. The song is sped up just a little bit, so Jónsi’s vocal has a boy-ish tone as a result. I think that all adds to the spectacle of it, though. Like I said, it’s in Icelandic, so it’s not like I know all of this. I’m only able to detail the story to you through this translation I found.

Sometimes ‘heavenly’ is an adjective that’s thrown around here and there, but I wouldn’t be able to find another word that would fittingly sum ‘Starálfur’ up. It’s all about those leading strings, can’t imagine anything but clouds opening to a piercing white light whenever I hear them. Or, like, those time lapse videos where a 24-hour day is shown in 30 seconds or something. Particularly during that ending section. Which is funny because the last 50 seconds of the track are these harrowing, anxiety-inducing noises of, I think, feedback that then leads into the following song on the album. ‘Starálfur’ appears again on Ágætis byrjun, slowed down to a quarter of its original speed and named ‘Avalon’ to close the album out. And for whatever reason, the band wrote that ending melody played by the violins so that it would sound the same played backwards as it did forwards. A musical palindrome, if you will. This is a magical, magical song. Very beautiful.