When Sigur Ros proclaimed from their remote, treeless, volcanic island in 2000 that they would "change music forever, and the way people think about music," there was something mythical about their otherworldly sound and the made-up language of their lyrics that had some listeners actually believing them.
Six years later, marriages, kids, major-label record deals -- and their subsequent insistence that their music is not, in fact, intended to convey any deep, or even specific, meaning -- has given their earlier pledge a certain hollow and hubristic ring.
So were they joking all along? Has fame actually grounded Iceland's second-most-famous musical export, by achieving the opposite effect to that it has so often had on rock stars slurring that they're going to save the world even as the rehab door bangs shut in their face?