I wish I had loved this more because a friend recommended it to me and it has basically almost all the genres I love. But I realized I was basically forcing myself to like it more than I actually do. It's still a great and quite unique album, don't get me wrong. But I listened to it a few times to try to get into it and only two songs really stood out in the end, and the rest are just okay.
To start with what I like about it, Jónsi's deeply personal lyrics are paired with his incredibly raw, almost sinister vocals. The best example of this is throughout Wildeye, one of the two amazing tracks here. The delivery on piercing lines like "You fill my mouth full of gravel" and "We went too far, my straight friend / There's no reason to pretend" feels so rough and pained. The production throughout the album is also really unique and unpredictable, as it constantly switches between ethereal ambience and glitchy post-industrial beats. Several other songs also have very unconventional structures that evoke abstract paintings. The obvious peak of the album is the hyper-pop banger "Salt Licorice" featuring Robyn (and Jónsi is really just in the background here). The whole song feels like a facade for something a lot darker, with shiny synths and Robyn's sugar-sweet vocals on the surface, but the creepy vocal effects and the heavy beats become apparent as you listen closer. The lyrics seem to be playing two moods in the same way, as they sing together about laughing and dancing in between more unsettling lines about their "Scandinavian pain".
On the rest of the songs aside from Wildeye and Salt Licorice, the vocals and production create some pretty stunning individual moments, but the songs feel lacking as whole pieces. Underneath the unique production/performances are either very typical art pop/ambient pop songwriting styles (Cannibal, Sumarið sem aldrei kom) that are pretty but don't really stand out at all from other artists in the genre, or abstract soundscapes that go almost nowhere because of a lack of a good chorus (Shiver, Kórall).
7/10
