Reviewing music by Sigur Rós is hard. Normally when I review a band that I count among my favourites, it's a relatively simple matter to disconnect my head from my heart and write something reasonably impartial, and even brutal, if need be. But Sigur Rós are different somehow. Perhaps it's a function of the lack of any understandable (for me) lyrics, which mean that I've connected to this band on a different level to what I've connected to most of my other favourites. This makes it really difficult for me to assess new work from this band in a clinical fashion, because no matter what I do, emotional judgements come into play.

So, let's start by going over some of the important points about this album in pure black and white. It's most definitely a stylistic departure for the band. If you were hoping for a repeat of the punchy, guitar-driven material on the "Hvarf-Heim" odds-and-ends collection, then you are going to be disappointed. Yes, there is a song here with lyrics in English. And most importantly, yes, it is worth listening to, although it doesn't have the staying power that the band's classic albums like "Ágætis Byrjun" had.

The most striking part of the above though, is that this album is in many ways a complete stylistic departure. Gobbledigook, the song that opens the album, is built around a bright sounding acoustic guitar with celebratory, playful vocals fleshing things out. It's a long way from the stately, string-laden epics of past albums, and almost had me thinking that this was going to be a much simpler, stripped down album than I was expecting. Not for the last time while listening to this album, Sigur Rós had me fooled.

Later tracks are all over the proverbial shop, from the unassuming lo-fi acoustic sound of Godan Daginn, complete with finger-scrapes as the guitar moves from chord to chord, to grandiose epics, like Festival, which starts out as a very minimal, very quiet piece before exploding at the seven-and-a-half minute mark into a glorious cacophony of sound, providing the very first epic, and one of the band's grandest songs since Viðrar vel til loftárása.

The grandeur of Festival is even further outshone by Ára bátur however, one of the biggest and most ambitious tracks that the band has ever attempted. Epic in size and scope, it was supposedly recorded in one perfect take with ninety people all playing simultaneously. True to form, the band nails it perfectly, from the simple piano line that serves as the backbone of the song, to the gloriously overpowered swells of the final inevitable crescendo that launch the song into outer space.

Then there is All Alright, a song that's gotten quite a bit of attention for being the band's first song where the lyrics are in English. Personally, I had hoped that the band would never actually make the move to singing in a language I could understand, both to preserve the mystique of their sound, and as a stiff middle finger to those who wanted the band to become more 'accessible' instead of being the musicians that they wanted to be. All Alright is probably the best possible concession though, because apart from being a beautiful song in its own right, Jónsi's lyrics are cryptic and ambiguous as they were when they were in Icelandic or Hopelandic, so its not as if my enjoyment of the music has been spoiled by overly literal or banal lyrical content.

There are missteps of course; the first four and a half minutes of Festival could probably have been either cut or separated into another song entirely. The track never feels like a cohesive single piece, and comes off more as two shorter pieces jammed up against each other to get the requisite lengthy runtime. The instrumental Straumnes also seems like a poor fit for the album, while it's certainly a pleasant enough piece of music on its own, its hushed, minimal tones don't mix well with the brighter, more exuberant music that characterises most of the album.

Like most Sigur Rós albums, "Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust" is a classic example of a record that perhaps appeals to music critics more than it will appeal to the general public. However, it's still a well-constructed and ambitious record that breaks away from the band's previous modus operandi while still providing a collection of suitably epic soundtrack songs for lazy documentary producers. Fans hoping for another "Ágætis Byrjun" or "Takk..." are going to be disappointed, but I'm sure that this album will eventually find a way into their heads anyway.