setlist (both nights)
vaka
fyrsta
samskeyti
salka
ný batterí
njósnavélin
svefn-g-englar
mílanó
hafssól
olsen olsen
popplagið
daniel koppich
despite some technical difficulties, the november 19 sigur rós concert at the
wiltern theatre was a great show. as the house lights dimmed, the intro played and
sigur rós took the stage. they opened with a moving performance of vaka (i
think i felt my lip quiver). i was shocked to see jónsi belting it out towards
the end the of song. he put so much energy into his singing that he had to stand on
his toes as his body became rigid and veins popped out of his neck. the band then
proceeded with fyrsta, and then on to samskeyti. i expected jónsi to turn his
back to the audience for this one, but he actually faced us. solid renditions of salka,
ný batterí, and njósnavélin followed ensuite. the performance
of svefn-g-englar seemed a little unspirited. everyone except for me took pictures
of jónsi singing into his guitar. onto mílanó and hafssól
_wow, these songs have really changed for the better. and then things started to fall
apart. going into olsen olsen jónsi began to have problems with his guitar
levels in the mix. he made signals to the sound guy, but nothing happened. jónsiçs
guitar could not be heard, and orri and georg had to compensate by playing extra measures
of the intro. as jónsiçs guitar kept popping in and out of the mix, i could
tell that he was getting really pissed. he missed some of his vocal lines because
of his distraction with the guitar. he even ran over to the sound guy at least twice
during the song. several impatient audience members got really rude, and yelled out.
jónsi looked really nervous, and i felt bad for him. they closed the set out
with popplagið. the whole band, and especially orri, was very precise. with the
lighting, visuals, and pre-recorded fills between songs, the production seemed more
high-end this tour, which is probably a reflection of the band_s gorwing resources.
it was a good show, but not the best içve personally seen from sigur rós. but
then again, içve only one other show to compare this one to.
(daniel koppich)
geoff harper
i find myself with a few close friends sitting six rows from the front of the stage.
we have come to experience icelandic expression first hand. first up siggi armann,
a sombre, semi-acoustic set, sensitive guitar songs with simplicity, met with appreciation,
highly commendable, a surely daunting prospect for siggi. the stage clears, we are
ready for the main event, or so i thought . .
a short while later jónsi, kjartan, orri and george emerge onto the stage, all un-phased and modest in manner. at this point the anticipation amongst the audience was electrifying. jónsi introduces the ensemble, the performance ensues . . . the following 2 hours of my life will stand and remain as a reference point of expression, forever burnt upon my consciousness. as opposed to an individual experience of separated tracks, my recollection is that of an entirety of experience, a journey from beginning to end consisting of coincident peaks of sheer joy and utter pain.
jónsi's voice pure and giving with honesty, contrasted against the massive
slow-burning rejective anger of the music, accessing the darkest areas of the psyche,
wandering through congested pathways of ones own mind with a newly inspired honesty,
i was intoxicated with absolute un-abandoned joy yet suffocated with a crippling emotional
pain. there where real moments where i felt that i physically couldn_t draw breath,
paralyzed, frozen, euphoric, mesmerized. the momentum grew and grew to a point of
climax, half way through the final song [8 - ( )] tears in my eyes, this marking one
of the most intensely emotional events of my life so far. as the boys took their final
bow, i was speechless, confused, elated, truly moved beyond that which i had perceived
as the emotional range within which music evokes. i refused to believe the night was
over, it was, i will never be the same. i'm not sure what forces are responsible for
this culmination of talented individuals, i'm not sure i want to know, their sound
is otherworldly, the resultant affect is simply life affirming. jónsi, kjartan,
orri, george and co. thank you, thank you, thank you.
(geoff harper)
variety (reuters)
for an hour and 45 minutes, iceland's hottest current export went through waves calm,
stirring, brash and glistening as it produced wondrous mood music that sent the mind
reeling, sometimes focused intently on the music, sometimes not.
it's almost magical how a sigur rósconcert can affect consciousness, elevating and lowering awareness levels of listeners who allow themselves to be transported to some place far from din of strings and keyboards. it's as mysterious an act as there is out there -- singing often in a language that few can identify; performing on a barely lit stage; and playing tunes from its current disc, "()," that's made up of eight untitled tracks -- and still it manages to make nearly every minute of music matter.
sigur róslives in a world dominated by whole notes and seemingly once the band, augmented by the string quartet amina, crawls inside the glacial pace of their eeriest material, they stage a revolution. with keyboards and guitars, it chisels at the whole notes and toss around the shards, embracing an anarchy that runs counter to beautiful melodies that make up so much of the first half of the show. there's a sense this music can't be taken in in a different order; it works like a tugboat pulling a ship out to sea, navigating obstacles with care until it has a wide-open sea to explore and speeds off unbound.
the best-known tunes remain "svefn-g-englar" and "ný batterí" and the former certainly elicits oceanic imagery, with a gentle, light foghorn sound blipping off the beat. both are trance inducing, though not to the extent of some of the new material that's overly hypnotic and/or bone breaking.
this is contemporary art rock, a generally unfashionable musical style, and sigur róshas a considerable allegiance to two wildly different 1970s explorers -- the wistful and serene singer robert wyatt and the commander of overloud crashing guitar symphonies, glenn branca. sigur róshas established a meeting ground that's rather cinematic -- filmed images behind the band suggest how expertly its music would work with film -- and it's a bonus when the songs don't just drift into a dreamscape; they know how to apply a pop bite.
mca had to be overjoyed with the first-week sales (20,000) of this album with no words on the spine, cover or booklet, and one suspects that down the road, sigur róswill develop a wholly new school of metaphysical rock that has a commercial appeal similar to that of pink floyd in the early 1970s. in concert, though, the appeal is more like that of the grateful dead -- the music is left to do the talking and leading, taking the mind on a journey that drops off the listener some place they're not sure they've ever visited.
presented by kcrw. band: jon thor birgisson, georg holm, kjartan sveinsson, orri
pall dryason; with amina. also appearing: siggi armann.
(phil gallo)
l.a. times
there are advantages to singing in a language of your own invention. for one thing,
if you blow a lyric during a show, who's going to know? you're also immune to critical
carping about not making sense or being clichéd. and these days you're not
even isolating yourself in a remote corner, not when there's a substantial audience
in the u.s. that enjoys music sung in strange tongues -- salif keita in malinké,
nusrat fateh ali khan in urdu, bob dylan in english.
that crowd, crossing art-rock, world-music, trance-dance college-rock and exotica borders, filled the wiltern on tuesday to bask in the enveloping sound of the icelandic quartet sigur rós. and singer jón thór birgisson certainly didn't need recognizable words to connect with his listeners on the first of the band's two nights at the theater.
the message was entirely in the gripping urgency of his unique singing -- a sharp, intense keening that resides at the outer edge of the vocal atmosphere. sometimes his syllables almost sounded like something familiar -- "inside" or "you slide," "yes i ... i'm down," "shine on our fire" -- but essentially they functioned as a sort of celestial, slow-motion mantra.
it was the focus of a series of grand musical tableaux, several of them drawn from the group's recently released second u.s. album, whose title is a symbol that looks like a set of parentheses and whose songs have no titles at all. (that's one way to discourage audience requests; no one shouted "track 5!" tuesday.)
nearly two hours of this can be demanding, but the tendency of the mind to wander (or shut down entirely) diminished as the pace and power gradually picked up. commentaries about sigur rós invariably cite the sound as a reflection of the rugged, mysterious beauty of their homeland, and while that might be a stretch, you certainly wouldn't say the bahamas if asked to guess where this music originates.
most of the pieces began with a stately motif, often from kjartan sveinsson's piano or georg holm's bass, then grew inexorably in density and intensity. birgisson played his guitar with a bow most of the time, thickening the brew, and at one point he held the guitar in front of his face and sang directly into the instrument's electric pickups.
holm created sonic clouds by strumming chords on his bass, and on one song he tapped out a riff on his strings with a drumstick, leading into an almost bouncy song reminiscent of peter gabriel. a four-woman string ensemble called amina added to the texture, and drummer orri páll dyrason pummeled like a rocker, sometimes leading the band into a fearsomely prodigious attack.
the closest comparison in mainstream rock might be radiohead, whose endorsement
helped bring the group into the non-frozen world a couple of years ago. the outline
of that emergence might sound arbitrary, the product of some lucky connections, but
sigur rós' performance argued that anything this doggedly original and powerful
would inevitably find its following, far and wide.
(richard cromelin)
