Those of you who caught Sigur Ros at the Hamer Hall a couple of months ago will know that they are human. Looking at them onstage, they seemed like any other band - four guys and a string section. But close your eyes and Sigur Ros can be anything. Their fourth album Takk is a testament to that fact. Songs become graphic - clocks working symphonically in a Nordic curiosity shop, sweeping ambitious landscapes, ice melting from a windowsill. Sigur Ros conjure all these things. Through all this drifts the falsetto of Jonsi Birgisson, singing this time in an official language (albeit Icelandic). Harkening more to the breakthrough second album Agaetis Byrjun, Takk is more playful than the groups' last album, but equally life-affirming and grand.
Tom Hoskins is from Readings Carlton
