Top Ten Tracks 2000 – 2009: #8

8. Festival: Med sud I eyrum vid spilum endalaust: Sigur Ros

Have you ever listened to a song that made every neuron in your brain tingle?  This song has done that for me.  Sigur Ros are a strange sort, post-rock I believe is the nomenclature used to identify their genre.  But their music is really something else, not all of it, but at moments it is truly transcendent.  When most of us who are familiar heard it we knew we were hearing something that had never been heard before.  Sure it had its roots in prior musical movements but it was progression and we were grateful for it.

Festival starts off as something seemingly forgettable and innocuous and it doesn’t really develop for a whole song length in a typical rock album, but then there is a turn and all the sudden you begin to move.  Driving. Hoping.  Longing. Perceiving.  It builds until your brain can’t contain the joyous rapture any longer and it bursts with a neurological effervescence!  The great thing is the second half of the song wouldn’t make sense without the first and neither would the first without the second.  You need the monotony to make the excitement more palatable.