On the discovery of Sigur Ros

On the discovery of Sigur Ros

It has come as an enormous surprise to me that the band Sigur Ros are not, as I always suspected, some terrible Scandiwegian death metal band.

This opinion was formed entirely because of the strange Scandwegian name with bonkers album titles that come with unpredictable accents, umlauts and things, which makes the casual reader assume they are dreadful Marilyn Manson types that eat babies and end up murdering each other when the baby supply dries up.

Wrong!

Sigur Ros are, actually quite excellent in a Cocteau Twins meets Radiohead* kind of way, and I'm big enough to admit that I only became familiar with their output after the BBC used Hoppipolla from their Takk album on their trailer for the Planet Earth series. I would go as far as saying that Sigur Ros are the greatest thing to come out of Iceland since they changed their name over from Bejam.

Apart from Bjork, obviously. And Magnus Magnussen. And that fella who plays for Chelsea, despite their enormous lack of class, the terrible bunch of chavs.

They are a band which gives me the excitements in my trousers.

And now, because of this discovery, I've also discovered Danish ten-piece Efterklang, the sound of several other bands you probably haven't heard of, if they could actually play their instruments and had a decent producer. Those laid-back Viking sounds just keep on coming, people!

Also: Thank you to the anonymous Scaryduck reader who bought me presents from my Amazon Wish List. This also gave me excitements in my trousers.

* Good Radiohead when they did "tunes", and not dreadful jazz "our drummer wants to experiment with rhythm" Radiohead.