Pitchfork

Comparisons between the music and the landscape come easily for this video of "Heima", taken from the forthcoming Sigur Rós documentary of the same name (also available without visuals on the Hvarf/Heim double CD). Pitchfork's Amanda Petrusich recently captured the look of the film in the words "stupidly gorgeous," and this clip hints at the reasons why. Canadian director Dean DeBlois lets the lens hover over arresting images as if they were photographs: whether Jón Por ("Jónsi") Birgisson's dramatic, brow-furrowed singing, the rest of the group's intent, eyes-lowered playing, or, most sweepingly, the natural grandeur of the wintry Icelandic backdrop.

As music, "Heima" unfolds slowly and deliberately, with the unhurried majesty of frost covering a field (see, there, I'm doing it). The chiming acoustic instrumentation and brushed drums imagine far vaster uses for such an arrangement than you'd hear in, say, an American coffeehouse. Birgisson's vocal-- first a wounded tenor, then a faltering falsetto-- at once conjures up the comfort suggested by the song's title (Icelandic for, roughly, "at home") and serves as a reminder that what's home for Sigur Rós remains wondrously alien to the rest of the world.

[from the Hvarf/Heim double-CD and Heima DVD; Hvarf/Heim is due 11/06/07 and Heima is out 11/20/07, both on XL]