Artist: Riceboy Sleeps
Album: Riceboy Sleeps
Year: 2009
Grade: 3 pretzels
It’s been nice to take a bit of a break over this past 4th Of July weekend (USA! USA!), but it’s time to get back to the grind. There’s music to be listened to, opinions to be formed and snarky comments to be oh-so-wittily posted. Shall we?
I’m only just beginning to understand how polarizing the music of Sigur Rós can be to people. Personally, I had always enjoyed the ambient, Icelandic group, but not to any extreme level. Most of my love for Sigur Rós can be boiled down to listening to the third track from their ( ) album while it’s snowing (which, for those of you who have never tried it, is nothing short of a religious experience). However, it has recently come to my attention just how far many people let their feelings about Sigur Rós go, at both extremes. For every person who gets positively teary eyed at a whisper of their name, there’s another person who detests the band’s ethereal, drifting melodies and more-or-less nonsense lyrics. While I myself am somewhat contentedly in the middle, I’ve learned that people have some very strong opinions of this one, unassuming band (from Iceland, of all places!).
In the middle of all this, we get the debut album from Riceboy Sleeps, an artistic collaboration between Sigur Rós’ Jón Þór Birgisson and his partner Alex Somers. The pair introduced their music with a track on this year’s Dark Was The Night charity compilation, which immediately showed that Riceboy Sleeps’ music was exactly like Sigur Rós…only more so. All the languid tempos are stretched out even further, the dream-like sounds are even more prevalent and whispy and the barely-there-at-all lyrics have receded even further into the background, leaving only a few ghostly, choral coos drifting through the clouds. It’s really amazing to hear music that makes Sigur Rós sound concrete and virtually traditional in comparison.
Needless to say, I’m sure people who love Sigur Rós will adore this album, while those who hate the band will detest it. Riceboy Sleeps bares so many overt similarities to Sigur Rós’ music that separating the two bands is probably not even worth the effort. Clearly, since Birgisson is the common element between the two bands, we can assume that this sound is his creation and he’s dedicated himself to it, no matter who he’s recording with. We can also begin to see concrete examples of what the other members of Sigur Rós bring to the group and what the music sounds like in their absence. Gone are the tribal rhythm patterns and even the crystalline piano figures that characterize much of Sigur Rós’ work. Sigur Rós are one of the smoothest, most gorgeously mellow bands in recent years and Riceboy Sleeps have somehow taken that sound and covered it in a protective layer of pillows.
Personally, as a mid-range Sigur Rós fan, I find Riceboy Sleeps quite pleasant, certainly achingly beautiful, but also a bit boring. The songs seem to lack a lot of internal character to me, which lets each song bleed seamlessly into the next, but also makes it very difficult to differentiate one piece from another. This is great if you want purely ambient music, which can drift gorgeously in the background without drawing attention to itself, but makes direct listening a bit frustrating. Without some of the more traditional elements of Sigur Rós anchoring my attention, I find myself wanting to wander away from Riceboy Sleeps’ music and listen to something else. At their best, Riceboy Sleeps create huge, evolving pieces of noise and melody (“All The Big Trees”), but too often they just let big washes of sound slosh all over the place for ten minutes. I’m sure there are legions of Sigur Rós fans out there who are already tearing up at the very idea of such a thing, but personally, the whole thing makes me more than a little sleepy.
I’m only just beginning to understand how polarizing the music of Sigur Rós can be to people. Personally, I had always enjoyed the ambient, Icelandic group, but not to any extreme level. Most of my love for Sigur Rós can be boiled down to listening to the third track from their ( ) album while it’s snowing (which, for those of you who have never tried it, is nothing short of a religious experience). However, it has recently come to my attention just how far many people let their feelings about Sigur Rós go, at both extremes. For every person who gets positively teary eyed at a whisper of their name, there’s another person who detests the band’s ethereal, drifting melodies and more-or-less nonsense lyrics. While I myself am somewhat contentedly in the middle, I’ve learned that people have some very strong opinions of this one, unassuming band (from Iceland, of all places!).
In the middle of all this, we get the debut album from Riceboy Sleeps, an artistic collaboration between Sigur Rós’ Jón Þór Birgisson and his partner Alex Somers. The pair introduced their music with a track on this year’s Dark Was The Night charity compilation, which immediately showed that Riceboy Sleeps’ music was exactly like Sigur Rós…only more so. All the languid tempos are stretched out even further, the dream-like sounds are even more prevalent and whispy and the barely-there-at-all lyrics have receded even further into the background, leaving only a few ghostly, choral coos drifting through the clouds. It’s really amazing to hear music that makes Sigur Rós sound concrete and virtually traditional in comparison.
Needless to say, I’m sure people who love Sigur Rós will adore this album, while those who hate the band will detest it. Riceboy Sleeps bares so many overt similarities to Sigur Rós’ music that separating the two bands is probably not even worth the effort. Clearly, since Birgisson is the common element between the two bands, we can assume that this sound is his creation and he’s dedicated himself to it, no matter who he’s recording with. We can also begin to see concrete examples of what the other members of Sigur Rós bring to the group and what the music sounds like in their absence. Gone are the tribal rhythm patterns and even the crystalline piano figures that characterize much of Sigur Rós’ work. Sigur Rós are one of the smoothest, most gorgeously mellow bands in recent years and Riceboy Sleeps have somehow taken that sound and covered it in a protective layer of pillows.
Personally, as a mid-range Sigur Rós fan, I find Riceboy Sleeps quite pleasant, certainly achingly beautiful, but also a bit boring. The songs seem to lack a lot of internal character to me, which lets each song bleed seamlessly into the next, but also makes it very difficult to differentiate one piece from another. This is great if you want purely ambient music, which can drift gorgeously in the background without drawing attention to itself, but makes direct listening a bit frustrating. Without some of the more traditional elements of Sigur Rós anchoring my attention, I find myself wanting to wander away from Riceboy Sleeps’ music and listen to something else. At their best, Riceboy Sleeps create huge, evolving pieces of noise and melody (“All The Big Trees”), but too often they just let big washes of sound slosh all over the place for ten minutes. I’m sure there are legions of Sigur Rós fans out there who are already tearing up at the very idea of such a thing, but personally, the whole thing makes me more than a little sleepy.
No comments:
Post a Comment