setlist
untitled 10 / vaka
ebow
svefn-g-englar
untitled 2 / álafoss
untitled 1 / lagið í gær
olsen olsen
untitled 3 / fyrsta
untitled 8 / samskipti
dauðalagið
ný batterí
pop song
all photos copyright © 2001 paul roylance
paul mcallister
sigur rós were headlining the first night proper of the airwaves festival (there
had been a warm up gig with emiliana torrini at the same venue a day earlier). the
venue was unusual to say the least. a long narrow white room with a thin balcony along
each side wall. the (fairly high) stage was at the far end of the room and there was
a large projection screen on the wall above it.
before the concert, the band had seemed relaxed but tired. they were feeling the strain of 2 months on the road but were keen to play a home gig. jónsi said it was 'weird to be back home, yet still on tour'. the concert was due to start at 8, with the doors opening at 7. by 7 there was a very long queue stretching right back around the building and a large proportion of the people seemed to be american or british.
the warm up act was páll oscar, a kind of icelandic ricky martin. he played a shortish set (thank god), accompanied just by a harp. i think the best thing you could say about it was that it was funny. a little bit. anyway, on to sigur rós. as with the north american tour, they were playing without the string quartet tonight, to some peoples disappointment. personally, i was interested to see how the lack of strings would affect the sound, especially since they'd still been playing string laden songs such as olsen olsen.
this was the first time i'd seen the new visuals and they didn't disappoint. they were always minimalistic yet deeply compelling and they complimented the music beautifully. vaka was accompanied by a shadowy infant face, somewhat similar to the images on the cover of von. there were faint raindrops on water for ebow and a superb waddling duck during olsen olsen. the most strikingly beautiful piece of footage was during álafoss, which was a line of white birds on a wire, occasionally flying off and later returning. as the song climaxed, all the birds flew off in unison. it was deeply moving, and one of the highlights of the concert.
this was the rawest and loudest sigur rós concert i'd seen in a while. the absence of strings seemed to unleash a rockier side, not seen for quite sometime. ný batterí and lagið í gær were immense, with stomach pounding drumming from orri. olsen olsen was powerful, and wasn't affected by the lack of strings as much as i'd expected. kjarri carried the melody well with the piano, as did jónsi's guitar. svefn-g-englar was impeccable. a year ago it was sounding a little bare, but with kjarri now doing backing vocals and with xylophone added too, it sounds fantastic.
jónsi moving across to the small synth signified the start of fyrsta. this is my favourite of the new sigur rós songs, and i was extremely keen to hear how it had developed in the few months since i'd last seen them perform it. every time i'd seen them perform it, it was slightly different. i thought they'd reached perfection when they played it at montreux over the summer so i hoped it hadn't changed too much. well, they've destroyed it. its barely recognisable. the hypnotic drumbeat is gone, replaced with a much more laborious beat. and the vocals were awful. all the emotion had gone. it was devastating to hear. i just hope that when its recorded for the album, they see sense and revert back to the montreux version. we shall see.
the gig ended with a bang. the last three songs, dauðalagið, ný
batterí and popplagið, were mesmerising. the power, energy and emotion
was remarkable. as usual, orri stole the show with some astonishing drumming. popplagið
ended the set, as is customary. it seemed louder and faster, but then it always does.
it gets better each time you hear it. the walked off to huge applause, returned for
a bow, and were gone. next stop brazil.
(paul mcallister)
careless talk costs lives
a glaciar of sound marches with imperial slowness, the howl of the wind teasing the
volcanic springs of noise, glyphs and riffs indistinguishable from one another. all
around, tears scalding cheeks in bright red lines, burnishing pre-civilisation magic-metal
tracing alchemy across flesh.... when talking about sigur rós, its easy to
slip into cliché.
in terms of pop contextualisation, sigur ros exist as one corner of the great isosceles triangle of the modern re-intellectualisation and de-verbalistaion movement in semi-populist rock, with mogwai and godspeed as the others. its only through their iconography that sigur are appropriated into the hobbit-fanciers brigade, which makes sigur a target for those who stand watch to protect against another early 70s prog hell coming to earth.. this most autumnal sweep doesn't mean sweeping yourself into 1,001 bad trilogy paperbacks aimed at the physics student in your life.
here, vocals are used not as signifiers of meaning, but as pure emotional forms, (only because you don't speak icelandic - pedantic [and also incorrect magazine ed]) understanding and comprehension are different things in the same way that a literal translation of 'sigur rós' to 'victory rose' misses the point: sigur rós, in icelandic, is a girls name. the attempt to dissect merely confuses. sigur ros demand a leap in faith.
people give them that space. before sigur ros are 1,000 eye-closed faces. people hold hands. lips pursed slightly. they swap. rapture. and it's then, when the band descends...that's too ugly a word..reclines into a wave of arctic feedback you can't help but feel the arctic wind start to lick at you - and no matter how hard you resist, you're back in icelandic clichés.
these cliches hae waited beneath this isle's crusts, waiting to erupt in a geyser.
at gigs like this, that geyser is sigur rós. in the winter night, we watch
earthly steam transmute into eternal ether.
(kieron gillen)
