The world is on fire.

Yet amidst the barrage of breaking news, the glut of misery, and an extinction event hanging like a sword overhead, here comes Sigur Rós with ÁTTA, like a much-needed balm of hope.

ÁTTA, which stands for the number eight in Icelandic, is the post-rock pioneers’ first full-length album in over a decade, which has felt like forever since releasing 2013’s Kveikur – despite ubiquitous ‘Hoppípolla’ needle drops and them being a constant presence in the live music circuit. Since wrapping up recording in the outskirts of Reykjavik and weaving in lush, expansive strings from London’s storied Abbey Road Studios, the band has considered the plaintive 10-track, 56-minute effort as their most introspective work to date.

But this was also all in the wake of a waiting interlude that has been trying and tumultuous for the band, suffice to say. After a legal impasse concerning alleged tax evasion and a sexual assault accusation that saw the departure of drummer Orri Páll Dýrason, the entire Sigur Rós project might as well have been rendered kaput. For these masters of transcendence, that time has all been strange and humbling.

Somehow, they persisted – even if they’re “getting older and more cynical.”

Jón Þór Birgisson, better known by his mononym Jónsi – whose haunting gossamer timbre is virtually emblematic of every Sigur Rós piece –  says, “When we do this, we always talk about each album as if it might be the last." Except he isn’t talking about some sort of swan song for the band.

“It’s this doom and gloom everywhere you scroll on social media and and everything kind of has this apocalyptic feel to it,” Jónsi tells NPR Music. “The world is ending, nature is dying, climate disasters one after the other.”

“The world felt a bit bleak making [ÁTTA], but maybe there is hope. When there is darkness, there is light,” the frontman adds in their official release.

ÁTTA is a stripped-back affair in several ways – texturally speaking, mainly, since there’s hardly any conventional percussion. But one thing has been “very obvious” to the band at the genesis of the album: the songs need to blare with the force of an entire orchestra to convey every sort of emotion among people living in these end times – and maybe also spur timely epiphanies to rage against the dying of the light, so to speak.

“After COVID and everything, people just need something nice,” says keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist Kjartan Sveinsson, who has returned to the fold after leaving the band (a trio now) for a not-so-brief time in 2012. “It’s hard to describe, but for me everything is always open to interpretation. People can think and feel how they want.”

I hopped on a Zoom call with third member and bassist Georg Hólm, talking about the band going back on the road with an orchestra and what went on behind the scenes during the making of their latest opus. Concerning the thematic undercurrents of ÁTTA, we also muse about what it means to be hopeful and to create in a time of discord. Our full conversation, below:

You’re on tour in support of your newest album, ÁTTA. You’ve been around the world playing so many shows and festivals throughout the past 2 decades or so. Is this tour shaping up to be different this time around? What are your own personal expectations for it?

Georg Hólm: Well, how should I answer that? We did start the tour for ÁTTA last year. We kind of started it as more of a rock ‘n’ roll kind of tour, I guess – which was great. But we did want to try and see if we could represent the record a little bit better with some orchestration.

And then, we decided that we wanted to try it out. And at the end of last summer, we tried a few shows with an orchestra, and it went really well. I guess that’s when we decided that this was something that we wanted to pursue a little bit further – try and bring this to more places with an orchestra. So, basically, this is a continuation of that and maybe even probably a better representation.

But it’s also a really interesting way of representing some of the older songs as well. We got a chance to play some songs that we have played before in some way or form – maybe not been completely happy with – and also been able to play songs that we’ve never played before.

So, we did experiment with it in the beginning, and it went really well. What we wanted to get out of it is basically what we are getting out of it at the moment: to represent the record a little bit better and also do something a little bit different than usual. And I think people are appreciating that. It’s a brand new way of experiencing a serious show.

You’ll be playing with different orchestras from all the tour stops. Can you talk about how you arrived at the decision to do this for the tour?

On the recording, it’s kind of obvious that you should work with one orchestra [London Contemporary Orchestra]. It would be unwise, I think, to try and work with a lot of different orchestras – at least, it would take a lot of time.

But with the tour, in the beginning, when we experimented with this concept of doing the live show with an orchestra last year, there was a discussion beforehand if we should be working with the same orchestra everywhere – bring an orchestra with us, basically – or try other ways of doing it.

It was partly a logistical thing, but it also very quickly became a preference for us because it meant that we could work with a lot of different people and different orchestras. And it means that each show will have their unique sound and flair to them. It just mixes things up a little bit, and it does break things up.

It’s definitely such a privilege, also, to travel around, meet different people and play with different orchestras. We’ve done two tours in the US now with an orchestra that has been, by name, the same orchestra – the Wordless Orchestra – but it is always different people in each city. Although they’re always called the Wordless Orchestra, you will have different people every city that we play.

It’s just in the beginning maybe a logistical thing because traveling around with 45 extra people is obviously a logistical nightmare, but on the other hand it has become something that just made more sense to us not only logistically but more artistically.

Next year, you’re going back to Asia. How has it felt for your music to reach listeners who live in contexts different to your own? What do you look forward to the most in your return?

I spoke earlier of privilege, and I think that’s definitely the word that I would use again. It’s a privilege to be able to be able to create music and travel with it around the world – go to, like you say: very, very different places, different landscapes, different cultures – and at the same time being so well-received. And it’s unbelievable, basically.

I think we do pinch ourselves every time we arrive in these places. We would think like, “wow.” It is a wakeup call sometimes. You get to a place and start playing, and you see all the people that show up and know your music and appreciate what you’re doing.

And I very much look forward to bringing this show [around the world]. We have played all around the world many times, but we’ve never brought anything like this. Also, for me, this is even more important because it does bring the cultures slightly more together, I think, by playing with local bands. It will mean that we get to cooperate with more musicians from each country.

You gave an interview alongside Kjartan last year, and he said, ‘Keeping track of who you are is kind of tough,’ as you were talking about your 2002 album ( ) [informally: the ‘brackets album’ or Svigaplatan in Icelandic]. Where do you think Sigur Rós is at this point in time?

Well, that’s a good question. That’s a very long time ago. That’s more than 20 years ago when we were doing ( ), the “brackets album” as we called it sometimes. (“Svigaplatan” is very good, actually). But I think each record that we make does in some way represent the point in time we’re at for the band. And where we are at the moment is… I think we do kind of have to live in the moment. And I guess we try to do it as much as we can, but it’s a hard question.

I think we’re in a pretty good place relative to what the world is like. I think we’re pretty happy creatively as a band, and doing something like this – bringing this orchestral tour around the world – is more like something that we would have just talked about and probably never have thought would actually happen. So, I think we’re in a very good, happy place with the band and the music.

I think we’re also in a creative spot where we’ve already started talking about making new music. I think that’s always the beginning of something for Sigur Rós: just to talk about doing something, not even to create a single note. It doesn’t really matter as long as we’re talking about it, then we’re starting something. So, I think it’s a creative good place that we’re at.

Also with the new record, it’s not exactly our most approachable record ever. I think that kind of represents just a little bit the place we’re at, where we don’t feel we’re trying to please anyone, but more like we’re trying to prove [something] to ourselves and just do whatever we feel is right.

Many times, your music has also been described as out of this world. Some people have even described the new album as “apocalyptic,” and Jónsi even described all the “doom and gloom” in the world happening as this album was being made. To you, just personally speaking, what does despair sound like? What sort of images and things does it conjure?

I think Jónsi is right. I agree. The world is in a pretty strange place. And our music – I really don’t think that we’ve ever sat down and decided to make a record to represent something like a period of time or anything like that, but I do think that our surroundings, the world around us, does always influence somehow what we’re doing. No matter who you are and what you’re creating – whether you’re writing a book or something, everything that’s going on around you will have some sort of influence on you.

I do think we do try and just create, if you know what I mean. We just get together as a band and create music, but there definitely is gloom in the record. But there’s also hope, which I think is maybe even more so on this record than ever before.

For me personally, I think this record is also very introverted. I think it does look within, and maybe in some ways that is something that we would love and like for the rest of the world to do: just look within. Not look away [from what’s going on around], but more like, look within and see, what lies within them. I think if people kind of speak to their own hearts a little bit, I think maybe the world could be a better place.

Can you talk a little bit more about how ÁTTA was born? How did it begin to take shape?

With each record that we make, every time, the process has been slightly different. I’m not 100% sure of it being by choice or if it just happens that way, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s always been slightly different in some ways. This one was no different from that.

We’ve been going through all kinds of times, you know, the past few years with the band, so not much had been happening for quite a while – by choice, and also not by choice. There’s COVID and all kinds of stuff that happened – members leaving and things like that.

It took some time, but it started out with Kjartan going to visit Jónsi in Los Angeles (because he lives in L.A. at the moment). I can’t actually remember if he went specifically to visit him or went to do something else (I think he might have been on a separate trip doing something else). But anyway, he went for a visit, and then they just started playing some music – piano and guitar, mostly just that – and just started coming up with a few ideas.

And then, there was a moment in time where they thought, “Hang on, this is going really well. This is going really easy.” Even if Kjartan was officially not really a member of Sigur Rós [back then] (although he kind of was anyway but just left the band for a bit), they were doing these demos and thought, “This is pretty good. We should probably go further with this. But if we go further with this, this is a serious record.” So, they decided to call me and let me know that they’ve been messing around with some ideas.

We basically just got together, the three of us, and continued with it. Went into a studio, recorded, and produced the songs. And there was the typical moment where you go like, “Oh, does this song want strings or does it want something else?” We tried all kinds of different things, but almost every single song on that record was just screaming for orchestration and strings. It just felt very obvious from the beginning that this wanted to be heavily orchestrated.

So, that was decided as well, and we went straight to Abbey Road. And funny story actually: we were there for a few days, recording the strings. It was beautiful, but I got slightly under the weather, and soon as I got back home, I realized I had COVID. (laughs) So, it wasn’t over when we were doing the record, yeah.

I remember, in 2020 as the pandemic was peaking, you officially released a recording of 2002’s Odin’s Raven Magic (Hrafnagaldur Óðins), which reads like an apocalyptic warning in itself. [Based on the folk poem of the same name, it tells the story of the gods who were too engrossed with their feasting, while omens of their impending doom manifest.]

That was in between Kveikur and your newest album. Is there a sort of thread between that and ÁTTA?

It’s a really good point because I didn’t even think of it – the Odin’s Raven Magic thing. It happened so many years ago that we wrote that and recorded it. It was just one of those things that was just lying around and was meant to be released years ago, and we just never were able to finish it properly – to never sign it off, basically.

It had it had a life of its own. It wanted to become a film. We actually did film a live recording of it. I can’t remember when we did Raven Magic, but this is a very old recording. But we finally signed off on it and decided, “Okay, it needs to come out now.” And it was kind of perfect timing because like you say, it sounds like an apocalyptic warning because it literally is. It is the story of Ragnarök, which as you know in Norse mythology, is the end of the world.

Ragnarök means the world comes to an end, but in Norse mythology, all ends are the beginning of something new. So Ragnarök is not necessarily a bad thing, per se. It’s actually the new birth. It is the end and the new birth at the same time.

So, maybe it’s kind of poignant, and I have never thought of it that way. It’s a very good point you make, that it’s apocalyptic sounding. And then we released ÁTTA, which is also sort of an apocalyptic, introverted look within, and says that maybe there is hope for the world somewhere.

When everything in the world seems inhospitable to joy or any semblance of hope – when it’s all about destruction – how do you even begin to create music? Or anything for that matter?

I can only personally answer for myself when I say that I do feel that creating in a slightly more difficult situation can sometimes be more creative. And looking at the world today, it is funny that it seems like every year, you use a sentence like this: the way the world is today, it seems like it never gets better.

But maybe it’s true. It never gets better. We are kind of like goldfish. We’ve forgotten how difficult it was three or four years ago. And it was a horrible world, you know? Slightly less than 100 years ago, but it was absolutely horrible. It really does feel like it’s coming to that place again. There’s a lot of polarisation in the world today.

I don’t like that, but I do try to meditate and read a lot of, like, books on Buddhism, for example, and things like that. I try to look at the world in that way that although I disagree with people, it’s not necessarily that their opinion is wrong. Maybe my opinion is wrong. So, I try and look at it that way. In my heart, I know I’m right (laughs), but if everyone thinks that way, that’s where the polarisation comes from.

But I do feel like sometimes creating in slightly difficult situations creates sparks within you, and it does help in a way. I’m not saying that I want the world to be in a difficult place just so that I can create. I’m saying that it’s sometimes easier to get – not inspired – but I think anger sometimes inspires you, for lack of a better way of describing the feeling.

There’s something a friend of a friend wrote recently and it struck me, the way it said that the better way to deal with life and all its miseries is to make art: ‘Whatever your skill level is… Make a mess and have fun. There are no rehearsals for joy.’ Before we part, I’d like to pick your brains on this, given everything you've been talking about and what the band created in ÁTTA.

I think that’s absolutely beautiful, and I absolutely agree – just create and be happy.

But it kind of makes me also think of Ragnarök because there is creation and destruction also. I think for us – especially if I look back at making ÁTTA, it was a very fragile record all the way from the beginning. It was very difficult – technically, tempo-wise, and things like that. It’s all very fragile.

It is like a big string orchestra. It just takes that one instrument to be out of key, and things change. Or the tempo of the music being different every single night and things like that. It feels like you can just breathe on it, and it falls apart. And I think there’s beauty in that. Because breathe on it, try and destroy it, and see what happens, it’s kind of like one of those Boston Dynamics robots, the dogs. They’re kicking around, and they always just get up and never lose balance. It’s kind of like that. They do fall, but they get up. Visually, in my mind, I’m picturing something like that right now. Like, breathe on the orchestra, make it fall down. Something’s off-key. Something’s out of tempo. It doesn’t really matter.

All of it comes back together again somehow, and there is beauty in the fault. I really like this wabi-sabi kind of attitude towards things – that things are just beautiful as they are. They will become a little bit broken, but it’s okay. There’s beauty in that also.

I think maybe ÁTTA is kind of like, you know, our [kintsugi] porcelain bowl that’s been fixed with gold or something like that. Oh my god, that’s very profound. (laughs) I didn’t mean to go that deep. I’m sorry.

Minimal edits have been made to this interview for clarity.

Sigur Rós will be bringing their orchestral tour to Asia in February 2025.

Check out the dates below and visit the official website for ticketing and other details.