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Confession

I like Sigur Ros.

I'm not sure how this happened.

It wasn't supposed to happen. It happened like this: I like to check out CDs from libraries during the summer. I found three CDs I wanted and I wanted to take out four. Araetis Byrjun was there so I grabbed it. I don't think I've created a single mix that doesn't include at least on Sigur Ros song since.

Sigur Ros is one of those bands I have been consciously avoiding. Something about the pretension.

Sigur Ros isn't a pretentious band, it is pretension itself. I will start, start, with the fact they recorded an entire album in Icelandic glossolalia and then invited fans to write their own interpretations of the lyrics on a blank section of the liner notes. Then consider that they released an album called Rimur where they paired up with an local fisherman to sing traditional mariner poems. They include elaborate puns in the titles of songs and albums. They play a bowed guitar with chromosome warping levels of reverb. Their songs sound like the keening of unhappy glaciers.

And yet.

I was wrong to deny the awful truth. Sigur Ros is a fantastic band and I feel better having said it.
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