Hvarf / Heim is something of an oddity from Sigur Ros. It’s been billed as a companion piece to their film Heima, a double disc package which has a limited run. The Hvarf disc is a five track electric studio record which has collated mainly unreleased songs from their back catalogue but don’t appear on the film. The flip side, Heim, is a six track live acoustic record which is, for all intents and purposes, a “greatest hits” disc but none of which have been performed in this manner before.

Now that we’ve got through the technicalities, what about the content of this package? Well, it’s a mixed bag. It’s hard to see this as anything other than a stop-gap. It’s hard to tell whether Hvarf is a sign of things to come or just a means of drawing a line under everything that has been before. The music is all we’ve come to expect from Sigur Ros. The sprawling aural soundscapes rolling and thundering over the listener, bringing to mind something rural and breathtaking. “I Gaer” is as close to prog-rock as they’ve come, the epic guitar riffs and building menace wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Pink Floyd’s The Wall, it’s only those peculiar, ethereal vocals that make it sound like it’s something from another world. The real stand out track is “Hijomalind” which distils all that’s great about Sigur Ros into one five minute opus. It’s close to taking the place of Explosions in the Sky’s “Birth and Death of the Day” as my favourite piece of music of the year. It’s gently swaying bass guitar is the centre-piece off which the grand, epic majesty of the music hangs; from xylophone to electric guitar to strings to vocals. It sends tingles down my spine every time it reaches its rolling climax.

The most surprising part of this collection is how well the Heim disc works. For a band that relies on bombast and grand arrangements, when their music is stripped back to its plain acoustics, it works surprisingly well. The true beauty of their songs becomes apparent and their talent as songwriters shines through. There wasn’t a greater example of this than on their recent Electric Proms performance for the BBC. Watching it I was completely mesmerised by the sounds, it was almost as if the absence of music was used to help create the atmosphere. This feeling and performance is echoed on Heim. The perfect piano of “Samskeyti” echoes around your head, the strings gently underlying it and giving it weight. The epic “Agaetis Byrjun” is transformed into an almost tender ballad, the brushed drums and, once again piano, take main stage around the piercing vocals. The whole song just breathes. It’s as if it’s been brought to life in this new and fresh arrangement.

Of course, the biggest disappointment about this set of records is its lack of anything new. Sure, it’s nice to hear some old favourites given new life, but we all want to know where they’re going to go next. Takk suggested something altogether bigger, more majestic and, not necessarily, better, but with news of them working with famed producer Flood and moving out of their comfort zone, something new and dynamic might appear. As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, perhaps this can be seen as a means of drawling a line under everything that’s gone before. The slate has been wiped clean.
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