Here's the good news: You can go to the Sigur Rós website and stream their entire soon-to-be-released new CD, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, which will be available commercially the week of June 23, 2008.

Here's the bad news: That streaming opportunity was a pre-release special that's now expired.

But don't feel like you missed much... The CD's pretty dreadful, although not uniformly so. If the Sigurs would just content themselves with post-rocking out, everything would be fine (although, I suspect, with an inevitable twee twitch... but it would be tolerable). But no. The Sigurs insist on making a brooding, vaguely churchy, overwrought nonsense that no listener should be asked to endure.

Still, the lead singer's pop countertenor is striking, when he chooses to squeeze it out of himself. AND the medieval language that Icelanders are forced to sing in is intoxicating for the ear to hear. Just listening to the exotica of Icelandic vowels and consonants and imagining how they might feel in the mouth is compensation enough for the music.

Also, if you had made it through the streamed version of the CD, you would have found a bunch of videos at the end. In some of them, the Sigurs let loose with the noise that only they can make and which their new CD needs more of.

2 Beatles rating

Pop music ― CD reviews