Reviews
Artist:Jonsi Album: Shiver
Label: Krunk
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.jonsi.com/
If Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi Birgisson's debut solo album Go matched the euphoric uplift of the band at their most epic with expansive, finely crafted arrangements and the odd pop hook, a decade later the follow up sounds edgier, more tempered, almost introverted in places. Ten years separate the two records and ten years can see a lot of things change - old certainties no longer seem so permanent and where it may have appeared sharp the future now looks bleary.
Welcome to early onset middle age, Jónsi! It ain't so bad though and from the first listen it's apparent that these days his clarion call falsetto belies a wealth of lived experience and knowledge gained - that he choses to sing a fair portion of this in English helps no end, of course.
Shiver is not by any means a difficult record. It has all the best elements of its more exuberant predecessor, but has added the salt that sharpens the sweet. Lead single Swill flirts with a heavier beat than what might have been expected and dashes the mix with finely honed synth blasts; while album opener Exhale make for a tense introduction until Jónsi's voice takes over to alleviate the anxiety that surrenders to a pounding beat as the song resolves.
It's in this territory that the record's best moments can be found - in the six-minute sonic petri dish of Kórall and the proggy undertow of Wildeye - that toy with structure, but perhaps rightly much attention will be focussed on a brace of collaborations with female singers that bring light to the album's shadowy heart. Cannibal is an achingly beautiful, impossibly atmospheric run-in with the unmistakable voice of Liz Fraser (for it is she!); while Salt Licorice is a four-on-the-floor banger that finds Jónsi turning up the heat (who would have thought it?) with Robyn under the disco lights.
Forget the glaciers and geysers of their native land that characterise much of the music of Sigur Rós, with his digitally-doused solo outings Jónsi has found beauty in the grit and grind of the numbers 1 and 0.
Nick Churchill
www.nickchurchill.org.uk
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