Sigur Ros - ( ) (2LP)

Some albums invite you in; Sigur Rós’ ( ) draws a circle around you and leaves you to float. Coming in 2002, after Ágætis byrjun turned them from Reykjavík secrets into global post-rock torchbearers, this felt like a dare. Eight untitled tracks. A near-blank package with no printed lyrics or song names, just those two parentheses staring back. Vocals in the band’s invented, syllable-rich Hopelandic. It sounds like a lot of obscurity, but the record itself is generous, patient, and weirdly welcoming if you give it a quiet room.

They made it at Sundlaugin, the band’s own studio just outside Reykjavík, a former swimming pool they converted into a recording space. You can hear that cavernous bloom in every piano decay and drum hit. Jónsi Birgisson’s guitar, played with a cello bow, hangs in the air like weather. Kjartan Sveinsson’s organ and keys feel churchlike without being pious. Georg Hólm’s bass moves slowly, almost tidal. Orri Páll Dýrason’s drumming is soft-edged at first, then suddenly volcanic. The production is simple, and that’s the point. The room does half the work.

The record’s structure is famously two-sided, a soft-lit first half and a darker, noisier second. “Untitled #1,” known by fans as “Vaka,” sets the key. A repeating piano figure, brushed drums, and choir-like vocals slowly stack into a lullaby that still carries a hint of dread. Its video, directed by Floria Sigismondi, took Best Video at the 2003 MTV Europe Music Awards, a rare moment when a quiet, artful clip beat out pop behemoths. “Untitled #3” (“Samskeyti”) is even more fragile, a piano loop that feels like a memory playing back on a looped Super 8 reel. If you’ve ever let it run while making tea on a rainy night, you know how the room starts to glow.

“Untitled #4” is the record’s hinge. Called “Njósnavélin” on setlists and nicknamed “The Nothing Song” in Cameron Crowe’s film Vanilla Sky, an early version showed up in the movie a year before the album, sneaking this sound into multiplexes before indie heads could even argue about it online. The studio cut here rises from a slow organ shimmer into a vast, aching crest and then drifts away, like the light changing in a long Icelandic afternoon.

Flip the mood and you get the second half’s gravity. “Untitled #7,” often called “Dauðalagið” or “the death song,” leans into menace without losing beauty, a long walk across black sand with the ocean pulling at your ankles. The closer, “Untitled #8,” nicknamed “Popplagið,” is a detonation. Live, it ended shows for years, building and building until Dýrason’s drums are a storm and Jónsi’s bowed guitar becomes a siren. On record, it still feels like the end of something, maybe the end of holding your breath.

There’s a reason this minimal thing became a big deal. The band refused to spell anything out and somehow made a record people projected meaning onto in a shared way. The blank booklet famously shipped with the CD wasn’t a gimmick; it was an invitation. Critics heard it. Publications like Pitchfork and The Guardian praised its patience and scale, and fans treated it like a landscape they could return to, not a puzzle to solve. For a group singing in a made-up language, that’s quite a trick, though “Hopelandic” is more a vocal instrument than a code. You don’t translate it; you ride it.

If you collect Sigur Rós vinyl, ( ) is where the format quietly shows off. The space around those slow piano figures feels bigger on wax, and the crescendos don’t smear the way some digital versions do. The ( ) vinyl pressing also makes the side break feel meaningful, a literal breath between the gentle first half and the stormy back end. If you’re hunting Sigur Rós albums on vinyl, this sits next to Ágætis byrjun as the essential pair. You can buy Sigur Rós records online, of course, but it’s the kind of album you hope to stumble across while crate-digging. I once saw a slightly scuffed copy in a Melbourne record store, the parentheses winking through a used-bin sleeve, and it felt like finding a message in a bottle. For friends browsing vinyl records Australia shops or overseas, this is the one I nudge them toward when they want a record that makes the room feel different.

Two decades on, ( ) hasn’t dated. It asks for time and rewards it, nudging you toward stillness while sneaking in a lot of feeling. Sit with it, let the strings and organ bloom, and when “Popplagið” finally tips over the edge, don’t be surprised if you stand up without noticing. That’s the spell this band casts, and this album might be the purest version of it.