Sigur Ros: Hvarf/Heim

Label: XL Recordings

Bands need to take time off, and if they’re going to give us stopgaps in between albums, let them be more like Hvarf/Heim. The album is essentially two EPs, the first disc consisting of new recordings of “lost” songs, three unreleased and two radical reworkings of tracks from the band’s debut, Von. It includes the shimmering, powerful “Harsol,” a legendary live favorite, here revamped with a dizzying, magisterial splendor. The second half of the disc is a marvel: six live acoustic tracks from Sigur Ros’s four studio albums, some reportedly recorded in locations with no electricity (!). Spare, haunting, intimate and lovely, these tracks absolutely sparkle, especially “Agaetis Byrjun” (the only live performance of the song). Anybody who thinks of Sigur Ros as a studio concoction need only check out these tracks to be proven wrong. (James)