‘Rafstraumur’
Media type: Song
Artist: Sigur Rós
Album: Kveikur
Year: 2013
I like M83. I like Coldplay. So when I read a Pitchfork review earlier this year that suggested that ‘Rafstraumur’, track seven from Sigur Rós’s most recent album Kveikur, went ‘goosebump-for-goosebump’ with some of M83 and Coldplay’s most moving offerings, I was intrigued. I downloaded ‘Rafstraumur’. And I never looked back.
It’s not just the deftly handled transitions between melancholic strings and thrumming electric guitars. It’s not just Jónsi’s always-ethereal vocals. It’s the fact that ‘Rafstraumur’ is atmospheric, thematically and musically unified, and complete within itself. Of course, Jónsi and strings and guitars can all be delightful individually, but together, in a slightly-less-than-five-minute package like this, they are transcendent.
The lyrics, incidentally, are gorgeous. I suspect that Jónsi could make anything Icelandic sound preternatural, but – according to Google Translate, at least – his words here are obscure and poetic and certainly grounded in the human. In particular, the chorus is touching (both to hear and to read – click the link for the translation).
Alas, I’m unable to give you a Soundcloud link to the original track (a Pitchfork link for the Cyril Hahn remix is below), but you might want to invest the effort in seeking it out. (And please, pay for it – for something like this, Sigur Rós deserve a little of your money.) My favourite moment is around 4:18, where the tumultuous final chorus resolves into drums that patter like heartbeats. With lyrics that refer to the heart and the flow of blood, it’s a touch that’s both appropriate and haunting.
‘Rafstraumur’, Icelandic for ‘electric current’ (raf, ‘amber’; straumur, ‘stream’*): beautiful music to dream to, and easily making it into my Long Tail Eight for 2013.
*It doesn’t make much sense until you remember that amber picks up electrostatic charges very easily; hence the word anbaric used by Philip Pullman in the His Dark Materials trilogy in place of ‘electric’.
Related reading:
Electric Blue Flower 