Reykjav?k came to D.C. last Sunday, and they brought their muumuus. Sigur R?s, Iceland’s most famous musicians after Bj?rk, played to a sold-out crowd at the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda, Md. Their new album, Takk (Icelandic for “Thanks”), was released last Tuesday.
The band’s string section, who call themselves Amina, opened the night. The four muumuu-clad Icelandic women shuffling barefoot across the stage between violins, cellos, xylophones and a musical saw were exactly what you’d expect at a Sigur R?s concert.
The main act played a good mix of newer songs and older standards, most notably “Svefn-g-englar” and “N? Batter?” off their 2001 American debut, ?g?tis Byrjun. The newer material from Takk sounded great within Strathmore’s renowned acoustics. In typically eccentric fashion, they played their first two songs behind a curtain, and most of the guitar work during the show was done with violin bows.
For a band whose last album was sung completely in an invented language (“Hopelandic”) and whose title was composed of two parentheses, Takk will certainly be seen as their most accessible release.
Takk is more reminiscent of ?g?tis Byrjun if only because it’s sung in an actual language. The songs here are also much shorter than ( )’s 13-minute-long epics. With the songs so condensed, the music seems to be a little more purposeful, focused and even a bit more poppy.
While the comparison might be offensive to the band, at points Takk can come across as a more experimental, electronic version of Coldplay’s 2002 megahit A Rush of Blood to the Head. Sigur R?s may not be appearing on Saturday Night Live any time soon, but, for better or worse, Takk is the band’s most clearly mainstream endeavor to date.
The songs on Takk project a certain contentment not present in the band’s earlier works. Lead singer Jonsi Birgisson’s famously ethereal voice is less melancholic and plaintive, and the lyrics are more purposeful here than ever before. On songs like “Gl?s?li” his vocals float happily above loud, echoey guitar. The pianos of “Hopp?polla” as well as Birgisson’s voice are nothing short of ecstatic. Whatever the band’s goal, they have created a record that, despite its mainstreaming, is still stunningly beautiful and wholly original.
