Go by Jónsi

The world divides into two kinds of people: those who believe you can divide the world into spurious, discrete camps, and those who do not. For the sake of argument, though, let's pretend that music aggregates into two sorts: tangible and wafty. Tangible covers most of dance music and metal, much of rock and pop. It has form and rhythm, a vivid sense of purpose. Wafty describes styles such as ambient and psychedelia, a twilit realm of the indistinct where music is unmoored from sense and materials, and soars off on thermals often hidden to the naked ear. Over the course of five albums, Jón (Jónsi) Thor Birgisson's band Sigur Ros has become wafty's most lauded exponents. The massed instrumentations of this Icelandic outfit attract adjectives more often found on nature programmes. The fact that their pagan choirboy singer didn't form words but rathersang in a made-up tongue dubbed "Hopelandic" only reinforced the impression of plutonium-grade waft. Having started out well as an Icelandic take on the Cocteau Twins, Sigur Rós went on (and on) in the same string-laden, emotionally manipulative vein until elegiac crescendo fatigue set in, at least in one listener. Last year Jónsi collaborated with his artist partner, Alex Somers, on an album of oblique instrumentals, Riceboy Sleeps, but Go is a far more forthcoming record. Not only does Jónsi sing but he sings words, many of them in English; composer-du-jour Nico Muhly (Björk, Antony, Grizzly Bear) arranges. Some think of Birgisson as more elven-angel than human: "Go Do", the lead single, finds him as a bird now, encouraging listeners to transcend themselves like some avian motivational speaker. The incursion of electronics and a sense of song balances out the preciousness of Birgisson's falsetto splendidly. An even better balancing act occurs on "Animal Arithmetic". A barrage of drums and cantering rhythms rub up against Jónsi's lower register and yet more (bilingual) words, celebrating the joy in all the creeping things. It is excellent. The rest of Go ebbs and flows, wafts and wanes. The twee "Boy Lilikoi" undoes the great good done by "Animal Arithmetic"; there are obvious denouements, and a great deal of soaring. On balance, though, Jónsi has taken his lungs somewhere more intriguing than Sigur Rós's holding pattern. He is no longer just the indie-boy Enya.