“Saeglopur” brilliantly channels “OK Computer” as well (in this case “Climbing Up the Walls”). The drumming falls away to reveal an initially strong guitar which, as its tone softens, carries the album into a more ambient section. “Gong” achieves a much moodier tone, anchored by mournful strings and percussion straight from Radiohead’s “OK Computer” (the two bands recently collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company). Thankfully, those moments of disappointment are rare. Sigur Ros may have mastered the art of the ebb-and-flow, but this 10-minute track, on first listen, gives the listener the strong but ultimately inaccurate feeling that the group’s bag of tricks is fairly shallow. “Milano” slowly climbs to a crescendo and then falls, only to rise to an all-too-similar peak at seven and a half minutes, only to slow-fade for another three. The rest of the album returns to the sometimes ponderous boundlessness of Sigur Ros’s earlier work. The relatively short track rises and falls effortlessly but not tiresomely, demonstrating a newfound and welcome conciseness. It is powerfully driven by a string arrangement that alone upstages every like-minded album this year. The album moves into “Hoppipolla,” another standout track.
But then the percussion kicks in, ascending into a fury that somehow channels the transcendence of late Beethoven. The song opens with a guitar slowly playing chords over twinkles of a music box and high-pitched harmonies - sung, as always, in singer JT Birgisson’s made-up hybrid of Icelandic and English. When the next track - “Glosoli” - begins, Sigur Ros roots itself in its prior work by demonstrating how much the group has developed. But there is an almost pulsing urgency in the quivering of the strings, and immediately the album separates itself from both the noise-rock that influenced “Agaetis Byrjun” and the follow-up’s lullabies. “Takk …” opens with the title track, a 1:57 introduction that matches the stoned ambience of Brian Eno’s ground-breaking early work. But way back then, the Icelandic Sigur Ros was just releasing its first full-length stateside album, the less realized but critically acclaimed “Agaetis Byrjun.” “Takk …” outshines both “Byrjun” and Sigur Ros’ untitled follow-up: It is less obscure, more exciting, dynamic and instantly wondrous than anything the band - and most others - have ever done. Had Sigur Ros’ new album “Takk …” been released in 1999, it would be considered a modern classic, a clear link between the shoe-gazing glory of My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless” and the atmospheric indie pop of Broken Social Scene or The Arcade Fire.
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