The best musical act to come out of Iceland besides Björk is undoubtedly the post-rock band Sigur Rós. While I’ll cover their greatest triumph on the column “No Skips,” the group’s heavenly singer, Jónsi, released a new record titled “First Light” on Aug. 30, 2024. Based on my knowledge of his contributions to Sigur Rós’s work, I was expecting a demonstration of Jónsi’s versatile abilities as a singer and composer, but this record was far from that.
I understand that being a multifaceted artist means you shouldn’t pigeonhole yourself into exhibiting only your best talent, as the prolific half of OutKast (André 3000) attempted to show with his ambient album “New Blue Sun” last year. The strongest parallel I can draw between that album and “First Light” is that any semblance of individuality, and frankly, a reason to listen to these instrumental records, is stripped when there’s no voice to latch onto.
Allegedly an initial score for a video game, “First Light” is classical, and therefore just engaging enough to be at the forefront of listeners’ attention. Though Jónsi should’ve vaulted this one to eventually be relegated as the soundtrack for a different game. As you may be able to guess, discussing individual songs on “First Light” is a fruitless endeavor because its best songs share the same copy-paste formula of starting mellow, with some nature sounds, and ending on a crescendo of strings before fizzling out and beginning the cycle anew. I will mention the fourth minute on the song “Clearing,” was the moment where I realized this record was going to be an unremarkable ride down generic soundscapes heard time and time again.
After sitting through this slog of a 50-minute record, I had to check Jónsi’s Spotify profile, and wouldn’t you know it: this isn’t his first rodeo with soundtracks. His most popular tracks are from the scores to all three “How to Train Your Dragon” movies, which are somewhat more inspired than anything found on “First Light.”
One could argue that anything Jónsi creates is better than what I can do. First, I would observe some of the questionable art pieces displayed on his website (of which there is no mention of “First Light” on). But honestly, buy me a violin and a good digital audio workstation and I think I could pull off something similar to this new album.
To comment one more time about the music itself, I cannot help but describe “First Light” as sounding like royalty-free songs on the YouTube Audio Library. The quality of free-to-use music by YouTube has grown exponentially in quality and variety over the years, but its greatest strength is also its biggest weakness. The universality and safe sound palette of tracks on the YouTube Audio Library makes them inoffensive in a video’s context yet almost impossible to stomach in a standalone setting.
All this is to say that for all the soundtrack work Jónsi does, it would’ve been fitting if he sold this record off to Google under a separate alias instead of attaching his name to it. He would’ve received an undisclosed amount from them and listeners would’ve been none the wiser to suspect this is the music of Sigur Rós’ frontman.
Rating: 1.5/5
OK, boomer