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 The album is a triumph, above all, of arrangement and engineering. When the piano kicks in on “Starálfur” (the same one that accompanies the discovery of the mythical jaguar shark in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), I still have to suppress a delighted giggle of wonder. It’s like watching an invasion of CGI superheroes, or (I imagine) revving a high-performance car and watching the speedometer float. It isn’t so much a sound as a special effect, and it communicates with your brain solely in dopamine floods. 

If you are inclined to sniff suspiciously around grandiose music, examining it for kitsch, you probably reeled away staggering from Sigur Rós, who proudly stink of it. This was another part of their appeal and their strength: The music is texturally complex, for sure, but the emotional framework is deliberately simple and clear. They are gloriously unafraid of blast-off. The piping melody that ends “Olsen Olsen,” doubled up with horns and a choir, is straight out of a Mannheim Steamroller Christmas album. - Pitchfork