Unbest

Ian Mathers on Jónsi’s Go (2010)
(iTunes, Rdio, Spotify)

Sometimes when you get into an album a year “late,” it’s because you just missed it at the time; in my case, not paying any attention to Go had more to do with Jónsi’s day job and my sobriety than anything chronological.

It’d be misleading to say that I dislike Sigur Ros, but they’ve always underwhelmed me a little bit, so the idea of an album by their singer didn’t exactly intrigue me. But then I gave “Go Do” a [9] when we covered it over at the Singles Jukebox, and, so of course I downloaded the album. But I think I only listened to it once, cursorily, and dismissed it as pretty but a little anemic compared to the surging “Go Do” before my best friend’s thirtieth birthday party.

Now that was a long night, and after about two hours of sleep I found myself sitting at Union Station in Toronto, waiting for my bus home. I hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours and I was desperately hungry, but couldn’t quite bring myself to eat. I felt very calm, very light, and very wrung out from all the partying. It was a crisp but cloudy day, cool but not actually cold yet, and for whatever reason I picked Jónsi on my iPod. 

Now, the songs here are very pretty, and especially if you’re a Sigur Ros fan, maybe it’s easy to get caught on that. But when the drums come in on “Go Do” or “Boy Lilikoi” this music soars in ways Jónsi’s more overtly epic main gig can’t really manage, partly because of the beautiful, ornate music, and partly because of Jónsi’s lyrics and vocals. Positivity, directed either outwards or inwards, can be hard to express without becoming either mawkish or banal, but because of the streaks of melancholy running throughout these songs of love and support (again, directed both inwards and outwards) here Jónsi sings movingly about youth, adulthood, maturation, romance, expectations, friendship, and self-image without ever seeming trite or shallow. Near the end of the darker, quieter “Tornado” Jónsi softly sings, as if to himself, the line “I wonder if I’m ever allowed just to be.” Go is ultimately an album about the process and rewards of becoming okay with allowing yourself to just be, with embracing that in yourself and others.

It’s also very pretty.

Ian Mathers is a writer living in Canada.