I don't know how to classify this album. When I share it with friends, they wonder how I could like anything like this. On the other hand, my introduction to this album and Sigur Rós probably biased my feelings for this music. I'm by no means a hardcore fan of the group. From what I've read, these songs' lyrics are gibberish that only sounds like Icelandic.

After a particularly violent breakup, a friend who helped me move gave me this CD in class. She said, "This is probably the last CD you should listen to right now, but for some reason I think that you should."

When I listened to the album that night, it was a strange experience. The hollow, barren sounds made me feel like I was back camping as a child. I remember getting back up after everyone had turned in and sitting by the camp fire. The darkness behind me was suffocating as I stared at the fire. It was a feeling of solitude that was both at once oppresive and at the same time liberating. The tracks seem intermixed between both sides of this feeling, and somewhere in the middle I found a center.

Ever since then, after a particularly hellish day, I love nothing more than to stretch out on my bed with this album in my ear buds and just breathe.