RE: Ohio in Stores NOW!!

God Bless Best Buy's corporate hearts. Too impatient to await for confirmation of the $77 order I placed at Paste (including my OtR pre-order) I walked through its shiny glass doors and $23 later I had one of two romantic but melancholy copies of OHIO in my possession along with a 2nd copy (a present for my best friend Justin, initially a "moving away" present, but now a "staying home" present, which is even sweeter) of Sigur Ros' cd/dvd single for "Untitled 1 (Vaka)" which contains three bsides (actually a single composition split into three tracks--at least they've always played it as one piece live) and a bonus dvd containing the band's three videos. If you've not seen any of Sigur Ros' videos in the past, each is as strikingly beautiful as it is a disturbing, combing a keen sense of aesthetics, warm, saturated colors, and POV which pulls the viewer out of his or her familiar territory for an experience that is haunting and deeply emotional. And the band is! n't in one frame of any of them.

Back to my reason for writing: OHIO. Wow. I can not stress enough the poignancy of the album cover. Hearing the whole album through now, I can say it confirms the impression I got when I first saw it. You have the two trees, representing Linford and Karin (on one hand, and on the other the two cds in the album), which appear to be holding hands as their branches overlap each other. They are perched on a spare hillside overlooking a lake which separates them from the cityscape. Isolated? perhaps, but with a towering perspective; distinct from one another, but united.