Sigur Ros is nothing if not unique

Spencer Patterson

Friday, April 4, 2003 | 8:46 a.m.

A symbol as an album title. Eight nameless tracks. Lyrics in a made-up language. And no liner notes whatsoever.

On paper, it wouldn't seem to be a formula for success. But for Iceland's atmospheric rock quartet, Sigur Ros, it has all added up to a global fan base.

The band's third album, released in October, bears a title best represented by two parentheses, "( )." The liner notes are beyond spare, with the only written offering being a simple reference to official website sigur-ros.com.

The eight cuts, all without titles, do feature vocals. But try as you might, you won't be able to decipher what is being sung. The "lyrics" are neither in Icelandic nor English. Instead, singer Jon Thor Birgisson writes in a sort of language of his own creation, known as "Hopelandic."

As drummer Orri Pall Dyrason explained in a telephone interview, Sigur Ros prefers to let its music do the talking.

"It makes it really personal, you know. You have to make up your own expression at the beginning," Dyrason, 24, said in broken English before Monday's show in Houston. "You don't have some stuff that tells you what the song is about. We wanted it this way."

Sigur Ros makes its Las Vegas debut at 8 p.m. Saturday at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel. The show is part of the band's third U.S. tour since fall 2001.

Created in 1994 by Birgisson, bassist Georg Holm and drummer Agust, Sigur Ros has undergone two lineup changes during its rise to prominence in the late 1990s. Kjartan Sveinsson signed on to play keyboards, and Dyrason replaced Agust as the band hit it big with its second album, "Agaetis Byrjun," in 1999.

Similar to its predecessor, 1997's "Von," "Agaetis" featured actual Icelandic lyrics. Catching critical attention, it immediately put the band on the map, and was quickly hailed as the "Album of the Century" in Iceland.

Before Sigur Ros' breakthrough, the small island nation was best known for producing Bjork and her former band, the Sugarcubes.

Dyrason said such accolades came as a complete surprise to the band.

"Yeah, it's surprising, but really good," he said. "It's really good when people appreciate what you're doing. It's like a bonus."

"( )" isn't recommended for the impatient. Its eight compositions proceed slowly, crawling along toward dreamy crescendos.

Despite their unhurried pace, however, the tracks never grow stale. Two of the album's most haunting pieces, tracks one and four, are especially gripping, evoking emotions in the same vein as Mogwai's best material.

Birgisson's vocals, presented mainly in the upper reaches of the human register, possess an undeniable other-worldly quality, gliding over the band's sparse instrumentation.

In concert, Birgisson bows his guitar, adding to the unusual textures that once prompted music critics to dub Sigur Ros "the next Radiohead."

So how do the members of Sigur Ros themselves keep track of so much untitled music? Dyrason said they still call the songs by their original working names, titles that were intentionally not presented to the outside world.

"We have very silly working names. They don't mean anything for the songs, actually, because they never had any lyrics," he said. "It was better to have no titles than to make up some titles that would not necessarily be important."

As for the "Hopelandic" lyrics, the band invites fans to visit its website and post their own thoughts about what Birgisson might be saying. Dyrason said he checks on that progress from time to time.

"That's very interesting," Dyrason said. "It's almost like the album is unfinished, and when you listen to it, you finish it yourself, putting your own meaning to it. I like that."