November 13, 2002

Just because Jon Thor "Jonsi" Birgisson and his collaborators in Sigur Rós hail from Iceland doesn't mean they aren't full of hot air. The fast-rising band's third album is an exquisite study in affectations, from Birgisson's plaintive, not-quite-wordless falsetto vocals in his own fanciful "Hopelandic" language to the slide-with-us-into-the-void CD packaging graced only by the cryptic see-through "( )" on the slip jacket. The tracing paper booklet of shadowy black-and-white nature photography is even devoid of any information about the group or the recording, except for the band's Web address. It all adds up to a grandiose invitation to the listener, as if to say, "Here, you fill in the blanks and find your own meaning in this blur of visual imagery and musical inertia." Indeed, if you care to submit your interpretation of Birgisson's murky vocalizations, a program at www.sigur-ros.com will tabulate a consensus set of lyrics.

But how you interpret incoming stimuli depends on how you're feeling at the moment, and ( )'s seven ostensibly wide-open, untitled soundscapes actually give you little emotional room to move. Slowly unfolding piano arpeggios, droning bowed electric guitar, sustained Procol Harum/Bach-inspired organ chords, austere drum beats and bass pulses in a fogbound mix of atmospheric strings, and Birgisson's limited syllabic vocabulary (I hear "you sigh" an awful lot) set narrow boundaries between the elegiac and the melancholic, with gradual builds to thundering rock crescendos offering occasional dramatic release. Still, just because there's a lot of pretense in the way Sigur Rós provides precious missing links we didn't know we were looking for – between the art rock of Pink Floyd, Stomu Yamashta's Go, and Godspeed You Black Emperor! on one side and the icy Nordic ECM jazz of Terje Rypdal and liturgical solemnity of Arvo Pärt on the other – doesn't mean ( ) isn't one of the most stirring and possibly most enduring pop releases of the year. Sigur Rós perform with Siggi Armann, Sat/23, Warfield, S.F. (415) 421-8497 or (415) 775-7722. (Derk Richardson)

Mark Farina
Mushroom Jazz 4 (Om)

If Mushroom Jazz 4 had been mixed by a top hip-hop DJ – say DJ Spinna or Pete Rock, who both have tracks featured on the compilation – rather than San-Francisco-by-way-of-Chicago house mixmaster Mark Farina, all kinds of beatheads would be checking this disc out. Mushroom Jazz 4 is light and easygoing, much like Farina's trademark house sets, built with jazzy songs bearing self-explanatory titles like Pete Rock's "A Little Soul" and English producer Wick Wack's "Mellow Soul Fruit." Farina blends them all together so effectively that they almost become indistinguishable from one another. Unlike many DJs, Farina doesn't simply drop out a track after successfully mixing another on top of it; he collates both, throwing in mixer effects such as echoes and taking out the bass, to create a unique new sound.

While it's hard to imagine Mushroom Jazz 4 having the same impact as the first volume, which is considered something of an underground classic by dance music fans, this new edition is hands down the best of the series. More important, it perfectly explicates a vision of hip-hop as an extension of beat culture alongside cool-out jazz and soul. Mark Farina plays Sat/16, Decibel, S.F. (415) 543-0191. (Mosi Reeves)

Various artists
20 Years of Dischord (Dischord)

In the film 24 Hour Party People, Steve Coogan's Tony Wilson confesses that his greatest weakness is an excess of civic pride. While the movie's take on Factory Records and Manchester plays up more traditional rock excesses, it is interesting to compare that particularly British postpunk story to the spartan origins of American hardcore. The gutter glamour of first-wave NYC punk had mutated to something quite different by the time it hit the suburbs in the late '70s. One of the flagship labels for disenchanted youth has its own version of civic pride: 20 Years of Dischord's three-CDs-and-book box set trains a selective lens on Washington, D.C., as a punk mecca.

In 1980, Ian MacKaye and Jeff Nelson started Dischord Records to release a 7-inch for their band the Teen Idles. The cover of that first EP, Minor Disturbance, featured MacKaye's brother Alec with xs drawn on his hands, a practice clubs used to mark underage showgoers. With that imagery and MacKaye's next band, Minor Threat, coining the term straight edge for nondrinking youth, Dischord produced a strain of punk that took more from the Puritan work ethic than from the Brits' nihilism and irony. HarDCore would come to be associated with this monastic goody-two-shoes politicization, contrary to the hedonism that ran rampant in Los Angeles and New York.

This is not to imply that MacKaye's crew were a humorless bunch, as the Teen Idles track "Deadhead" hazily reveals. Cohorts like Void and the Snakes made chaotic (the former) and goofy (the latter) music that did not fit the constraints hardcore imposed. Unfairly burdened with the blame for the macho mentality of what became the "straight edge movement," MacKaye can take some heat on his exposed scalp for incubating emo with his next band, Embrace. Responsibility for the "trend," and urban legend, of grown men crying at shows also falls at the feet of MacKaye's Fugazi bandmate Guy Picciotto, whose band Rites of Spring is widely considered the blueprint for emo. Introspective and melodic, ROS emerged from the "Revolution Summer" of 1985, amid D.C.'s second generation, after the initial school of bands broke up.

The first disc of this collection encapsulates these first two waves, which constituted most of the label's 1980s output. Since the term's coinage, emo has become as much of a punch line for its adherents as for its detractors – it's almost as if the subgenre were an apology for or an emasculation of the herd mind of straight edge. Fugazi itself can be seen as masculinity in conflict: MacKaye, the guttural everyman; Picciotto, the whiny dandy.

The second disc covers the artists that carried the label through the '90s. This is my favorite period. Although Shudder to Think and Jawbox made the move to major labels, the Dischord stamp of approval served well enough for influential acts such as Circus Lupus (who do a commendable cover of the Avengers' "We Are the One"), Nation of Ulysses, Slant 6, Lungfish, and Hoover. This collection is not without its stinkers: Fidelity Jones, Branch Manager, and Bluetip could be relegated to the dollar bins. The past few years saw a loss of focus for the label, with newer bands like Smart Went Crazy and Faraquet breaking up before finding their voice, though newest signees Q and Not U signal stabilization.