It seems absurd to criticise music for being too beautiful for its own good, but Sigur Rós are sometimes guilty of soul-sapping tastefulness. In fairness, their fifth album acknowledges this dilemma, adding some promising new twists to their symphonic ambi-rock formula.

Inspired by last year’s concert-film project, Heima, they recorded these 11 tracks in more spontaneous and unpolished circumstances than usual, swapping their Icelandic comfort zone for New York, London and Havana.

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This departure, in the album’s first half at least, produces fabulous new experiments like “Gobbledigook”, which weds tempo-shifting flamenco-folk to stomping baile funk drums. More muscular beats and life-affirming psych-pop epiphanies follow.

Sadly the album’s latter stages revert to type, as Jónsi Birgisson’s quavering choirboy falsetto illuminates glacially paced piano and strings. All achingly lovely in a Coldplay-meets-Clannad way, of course, but Sigur Rós play too safe when they clearly have much more to offer than misty-eyed Celtic abstraction.

STEPHEN DALTON