Cafe Aracir

After the somber dirges of their {|untitled third album|}, Sigur Rós return to what they do best on Takk... As on 1999's brilliant {|Ágætis Byrjun|}, the Icelandic troupe create spacious, crescendo-filled art-rock symphonies that are overwhelmingly beautiful. Takk... is the Icelandic band's brightest, most upbeat album, with Jónsi Birgisson's angelic voice soaring into the stratosphere (multi-tracked, he sounds like a boys' choir), and with tinkling chimes and trebly piano and keyboards taking newly prominent roles among the band's trademark kettle drums, bowed guitars, and cinematic strings. Many tracks expand and contract over the course of six or more minutes, and while they're usually structured around several crashing epiphanies, they get there in different ways. The euphoric, triumphant "Hoppipolla" quickly rises on a music box�like keyboard figure, pounding drums, and eerie voices -- then pauses before ascending further on orchestral strings, horns, and impossibly pretty vocals. "Sé lest" begins with a hypnotic, circular pattern, first played on what sounds like a vibraphone and later picked up by piano and chimes, which then cede to an oom-pah-pah horn fanfare before fading into a creaky electronic coda. Sigur Rós are masters of music that swoons and is swoon-inducing.