Music to write to: Sigur Rós

Heart-achingly beautiful, few if any bands can create an ethereal atmosphere like Sigur Rós. I was actually fortunate enough to come in contact with this band for the first time, watching HBO’s live concert series, Reverb. The band simply blew me away with their walls of sound… it was like nothing I’d ever heard before and truly one of the most unique bands I regularly listen to.

Although they have developed their style to include many feelings and emotions, the overall feeling they often project and have basically perfected could be best described as celestial melancholy. Listening to their music you can face the brink of your sadness and although at times you might almost be swallowed by a huge ocean of tears that wells up within you, more often than not, you come afloat humming from the experience of strumming your soul.

That’s how deep this band can touch me… and with each successive release, they’ve offered me some of the best music I’ve ever been exposed to, even if I don’t understand it, because it’s in Icelandic, or because I’m not supposed to. You see, many of their songs have vocals although they don’t have intelligible lyrics. The lead singer, Jonsi, sings hopelandic or vonlenska, a non literal language that has no structure, no grammar, no rules and just pure emotion… and that’s what you get with Sigur Rós, more often than not… pure emotion.

So by all means, strap your headphones on and swim towards heaven.