20 Watts

Riceboy Sleeps is far more than a Sigur Ros side project

First and foremost, Riceboy Sleeps, the new ambient album by Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi Birgisson and boyfriend Alex Somers, is a project of love. Forget about that. Don’t be phased by the fact that they’re lovers and making music together. Never mind the fact that—apart from being the cutest thing in the world—it’s so hip it could make Charlie Daniels crap his pants. With its emphasis on what Jónsi calls “organic sounds” and acoustic instruments, not to mention Amiina (Sigur Rós’s incredibly talented string quartet), Jónsi and Alex’s Riceboy Sleeps is better appreciated without the back-story.

Unsurprisingly, Riceboy Sleeps shares more in common with Sigur Rós than it does with other ambient music, like the work of Brian Eno. Jónsi’s trademark falsetto vocals are present on four of the album’s nine tracks, but this is far from a drawback. In fact, the stand-out songs of the album happen to be the ones that utilize vocals and instrumentation to form a cohesive sound.

“Boy 1904” begins right off with what sources all over the Internet claim to be the “only known recording of the last castrato.” Both the shortest and most accessible track on the album, “Boy 1904” also serves as a kind of midpoint (track five of nine) for it. The songs get progressively less vocal-heavy as the album closes, almost like the vocals on the album appeared on a bell-curve. (“Happiness,” the now-famous lead track, has no singing, and neither does “Sleeping Giant,” the closer.)

On “Indian Summer,” the strings carry on seemingly forever, complemented by a few lilting bars on the piano. All of a sudden, about six minutes into the song, choral voices start to creep in alongside the strings, as if they had grown from the violins themselves. The singing (several layers of Jónsi’s falsetto) progressively crescendos to vocalize apart from the strings, with multiple voices playing against each other. Like Sigur Rós, the meaning is in the sound of the voice, not the words used—voice as an instrument. Keeping with this philosophy, “Indian Summer” closes with the instruments steadily dropping out, and the singer quietly doing so the same way. In their video commentary, Alex and Jónsi described the song as “naked” without the vocals, and it would be. “Indian Summer” isn’t just the most expressive track on the album; it’s the most complex, divided into two sections, one a piano-driven meditation, and the other a string-soaked celebration.

“Sleeping Giant,” the final excursion on the album, closes it off with an ominous tone. The strings are subdued for the most part towards the beginning of the song, and only pick up later. Throughout the track creaking and breathing noise constantly resonate in the background, as if a sleeping giant were indeed snoring. And after 68 minutes of gentle, relaxed music, the album finally comes to a close over the isolated creaking of a giant at rest, perhaps sprawled out somewhere in the forest or over rocks on a mountainside.

Listening to Riceboy Sleeps from beginning to end has a calming effect. Jónsi and Alex take their listeners more on a soothing trip, than present them with music. The record will undoubtedly not suit everyone who listens. Like the work of Sigur Rós, emotional impact is inevitable, if for no other reason than the effect of Jónsi’s falsetto. If you can pay attention, though, the riceboy will reward you for your time. Did I mention these two recorded it all in their house? Maybe back-story does help us appreciate it a bit.

–Eric Vilas-Boas