Sin Fang Bous is the one-man project of Sindri Már Sigfússon, the Icelander whose last one-man project, Seabear, swelled into a septet. But, just like his work with the old band, sweetness-with-bite wouldn't be the worst way to describe Clangour, Sigfússon's debut under his new name. Sure enough, the soothing sensibility of Seabear-- indie-rocking but peaceful, even a bit twee-- lives on in Sin Fang Bous. But here it gains teeth, so to speak. Leaving behind the predictable comforts of his group work, Sigfússon suffuses his new project with little anxieties and mysteries that have the power to surprise.
If you watch the video for "Advent in Ives Garden", a playfully literal translation of the lyrics, each verse given clumsily animated life, you'll find that its harlequin color, surreal sights, and crooked lines mimic the naive experimentalism of outsider art. Beyond this one song, the video's aesthetic captures the twisted-fairytale aura and the alluring looseness, of both concept and composition, that marks the entire record. You can find these elements on "Catch the Light" and "Clangour and Flutes", two shabbily uptempo numbers that lean heavily on a 4/4 thump; both go for an acoustic, even rural simplicity with their piano arpeggios, or shimmering tambourines, or solitary flute. That steady digital pulse adds a surprising dimension to the otherwise analog activity in the foreground: on "We Belong", it offers an emotional anchor for the soaring Paw Tracks-style flights of fancy that isn't there on, for one, the skittering and thoroughly processed "A Fire to Sleep In".
Layering works for Sigfússon, partly because you can't always guess what he will stack next, or when. The path of each song can fork without warning. "Fafafa", a mosaic of chopped-up, mealymouthed vocals seems to be going nowhere, before this prelude suddenly burgeons into a miniature orchestra, Xeroxing his own voice over itself, but also fastening together piano and organ, and installing it all above a humble rhythm of rattling, twanging percussion. The gorgeous farewell track, "Lies", startles the listener with its sheer hymnlike austerity. The crescendo never comes: the train-like percussion never explodes into a frenzy of drums, its faraway vocals never swell into a yell. Instead, Sigfússon moans plaintively over the glittering cascade of piano samples, and the momentum really never flags.
Equally surprising are the deviations of genre. Apparently an apple amid oranges, "Melt Down the Knives" exhausts its dark, Nuggets-via-post-punk energy in two minutes flat. It seems out of place on the record, when you set its macho bombardment of guitars and its air of pessimism against the other tracks. But when you place it beside "Sunken Ship", swollen with the baroque machinery of Sgt. Pepper's psychedelia, it illuminates the sources behind Sin Fang Bous's kitchen-sink adventures: the 1960s. It's not unreasonable, in fact, to sense a Spectorian wall of sound in the percussive boom and splash of "Carry Me Up to Smell Pine". With an imagination thoroughly sculpted by the past, Sigfússon's cut-and-paste folk manages effortlessly to evoke both the psychedelic rockers of yesteryear and more recent enchanters like Stuart Murdoch and Panda Bear.
