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It's one of those releases that takes awhile to seep in completely, and while there are a great deal of amazing songs, it doesn't move me quite as much as their last disc.

Some of the most evocative music of this century. [Dec 2002, p.97]

Charming and enrapturing, adrift in its own unique, invented world. [#11, p.142]

When the mood allows, and there's time to let it all sink in, an album like ( ) is indispensable nearly from beginning to end.

The Icelandic quartet again create an ethereal stir with sparse, atmospheric melodies and a falsetto wail, often recalling the sonic swirl of Stateside slow-core acts like Low. [1 Nov 2002, p.70]

The album rocks, its symphonic depth and stratosphere-surfing melodies more affecting with each subsequent listen. [Jan 2003, p.98]

The album coheres; it's a full body of work intended to be heard holistically, not simply as a collection of songs. But it takes some work. You must be an active listener to appreciate it fully.

When it works its magic, as on the opening suite of tracks, you will happily sit mesmerised for seven or eight minutes of glimmering sonic twilight and translucently tingling ambi-organic pearly-dewdrops droppery. But when the spell is broken, as on two or three later tunes, when more traditional instrumentation turns up late and dishevelled for a half-hearted cosmic-rock supernova, the effect is rather like gatecrashing some purgatorial soundcheck by a Pink Floyd covers band in, say, 1968. Or possibly Spiritualized.

A decent follow-up from a band who has already proven themselves capable of much, much more.

Sigur Ros do this better than anyone else right now.

So maybe there's nothing here more interesting or deep or significant than what it is on the surface: a very beautiful record that means nothing more than what it is...

A masterpiece of bombed orchestral elegance, at once expansive and intense. [Dec 2002, p.112]

This impressive follow-up sounds remarkably similar -- it's just packaged more pretentiously.

On (), the band steer their ghost ship into darker waters, erecting a vast, austere cathedral of sound, then sticking around to score a funeral mass inside. [Dec 2002, p.140]

An overblown, overhyped dreamy swirl of sound that can't commit itself to being anything.

More inventive song writing and a less antagonistic stance could have helped Sigur Ros create something as equally stirring as their previous album.

It actually transcends its predecessor in its unsettling, under-the-skin beauty.

The group's masterpiece.