Ian Cohen suggests that the album offers ‘equisite beauty’.
While he’s never made the same album twice, either as a solo artist or a collaborator or the frontman of Sigur Rós, he’s also never made an album that turned out anything other than exquisitely beautiful, no matter how much he’s fought against it.
Source: Átta – Sigur Rós by Ian Cohen
While NPR argues that this is an album for our times. In an interview with Bob Boilen, Jónsi describes the album as heavy but hopeful.
It is interesting because when we were doing this album, there was this, I don’t know, maybe it’s just in the world we’re living now, but it’s this doom and gloom everywhere you scroll on social media and and everything kind of has this apocalyptic feel to it. The world is ending, nature is dying, climate disasters one after the other. Yeah, wildfires in Canada and a lot of wildfires in LA War in Ukraine and all this stuff. And we were kind of doing it at that time the war started and all these disasters. And I remember, yeah, there’s definitely something … not gloomy, but, I don’t know, something heavy but also hopeful [at the] same time.
Source: Jónsi explains how Sigur Rós made its first new album in a decade by @NPR
This balance allows the listener to make of it what they want.
I think what is most remarkable is that people take their own meaning from it because they don’t understand the lyrics. Or everybody makes their own meaning and interpretation in their mind. And I think that’s kind of amazing. You’re not like being spoon fed some specific lyrics, some love lyrics or something.
Source: Jónsi explains how Sigur Rós made its first new album in a decade by @NPR
I feel this album important for the moment in the same way that Mixing Colours was right for the start of the pandemic. It forces us to stop and consider.