Muse and Sigur Ros

I have not written at much length about music so far on my blog, and I regret this to some extent. I love music. It is a tremendous passion of mine, and I should spend more time discussing it. Here, I wish to highlight a couple of my favorite bands and why I find them so wonderful to listen to.

First, Muse. Muse is a British band that came onto the pop/rock/alternative scene in the late nineties but who has continued to produce good music throughout the past decade. While I sometimes list them among the new wave of Britpop bands such as Keane and Coldplay (two of my other favorites), Muse’s work is more complex than Keane’s and deeper than Coldplay’s. It has a gritty quality about it that tears life apart and reveals something deep inside all of us.
A few of my favorite Muse songs are: Falling Away with You, Hysteria, Butterflies & Hurricanes, Exo-Politics, and City of Delusion. Butterflies & Hurricanes features what is effectively a piano cadenza while City of Delusion features a trumpet solo. Both are, obviously, unusual features for rock songs.

Second, Sigur Ros. Sigur Ros is an Icelandic band who is most frequently classified as post-rock. Post-rock is a type of popular music characterized by rock instrumentation of classical chord structures, harmonic patterns, and melodies. Unsurprising, then, that Sigur Ros has become one of my favorites, given my background in classical music.

Of particular note about Sigur Ros is their album, (). Yes, the name of the album is simply an open and closed parenthesis. Oftentimes in modern day popular music, an album is merely a collection of tracks. It is highly infrequent to see something such as the B side of Abbey Road where all the tracks are tied together. Even a common theme on an album can be rare these days. But Parentheses, as it is commonly called, is a complete album. The first half, the ( side, if you want to think of it that way, attempts to capture all of the positive emotion of life. The ) side, unsurprisingly, attempts the reverse – the capturing of all negative emotion in life. All the songs flow together, and the entire album is done in the key of E (major for the first half, minor for the second). It is a truly spectacular album with the climax coming about 2 minutes from the end of what is a monstrous CD – over 70 minutes.

A few of my favorite Sigur Ros songs are: Untitled Tracks 1, 3, and 8 on Parentheses, Saeglopur and Gong on Takk, and Ara Batur on Med Sud… (their most recent album). Agaetis Byrjun is also a great album, but I don’t find any particular tracks to stand out.

There will be more to come on the music front, I promise.