SIGUR RÓS Takk EMI *****

Sigur Rós are the best band in the world. Maybe not best in terms of record sales or most mentions by the 3am Girls, but most certainly best in ineffably beautiful music. Think The Polyphonic Spree skirmishing in the studio with Radiohead as the Vienna Boys Choir perform on LSD in the background, while Phil Spector and Syd Barrett wrestle for the controls in the production booth. You don't have to have spent any time in Reykjavik to appreciate Sigur Rós, but it might explain why the band's music is often described in terms of glaciers moving and geysers burbling. "Ethereal" and "eccentric" were the words most used in describing their first three albums, which had the unlikely duo of Coldplay and Mötley Crüe both describing Sigur Rós as the most breathtakingly brilliant sound around.

They may have lost the post-rock run of themselves on the last album - it was named after an oval symbol and the lyrics were in a made-up language called "Hopelandic". But on Takk the band are back with spooky and fractured songs of praise. Jonsi Birgisson sings like a young Aled Jones on glue - his unearthly falsetto provides its own in-built Surroundsound. Gentle pianos twinkle before giving way to soaring orchestral flourishes that sound like the Godsquad have kidnapped Philip Glass and ordered him to record on a 48-track. Admirably alluring/elegantly enticing/mag-nificently mesmeric. You get the picture. Makes Björk sound like Dolly Parton.