photos by mike dare
photos by jeremy beckman
photos by pieter nystrom
photos by childs
photos by elizabeth dee
setlist
vaka
mílanó
ný batterí
gong
olsen olsen
salka
viðrar vel til loftárása
hafssól
smáskífa
gítardjamm
svefn-g-englar
popplagið
renata garza
i just want to say that the concert on monday (4/7) exceeded any expectations i had,
which were already high. jónsi’s voice was flawless; he sang like an
angel and the rest of the group was equally awesome. everything about the show was
incredible including the minimal,but absolutely perfect, lighting, as well as the
sound. my only complaint was that i couldn't block-out people talking or getting up
around me. i wish there was a way to regulate the audience because i felt the show
was something to be revered, that it's so much more than a typical rock concert. after
listening to agaetis byrjun and ( ) non-stop for the past few months and seeing them
live, sigur rós have eclipsed radiohead for me, which is pretty huge for someone
like me who loves radiohead like i do. thank you sigur rós for making such
beautiful music for me to enjoy so, so much.
(renata garza)
james rawson
i was deeply moved and impressed with the los angeles show that i attended on monday,
april 7th. this was my first time seeing the band live. the band, and the quartet
seemed in top form, complementing eachother perfectly. definitely one of the best
live performances i have ever seen. excellent choice on the venue as well - everyone
respectfully sat in complete silence, savoring each and every note, whisper, and expression.
and whoever engineered the sound did a phenominal job, the dynamics were all represented
in amazing detail. i would suspect that this tour went very well for all involved,
so i want to say thank you to sigur rós, for writing such beautiful music.
and thank you to everyone else who made this tour possible, all the people behind
the scenes, well done.
(james rawson)
michael gardner
there is absolutely no way to describe it. none. it's not possible. to begin with,
the lyrics to sigur rós' songs are drafted with words that don't exist - in
any language. they're written in "hopelandic". subject matter and topic interpretation
is a uniquely subjective experience for each individual. reviewing their untitled
album with untitled tracks is one thing, but to see them live, to be encapsulated
in the acoustics of their unfathomable glory and inexplicable emotional excesses,
is an entirely different animal.
the fact that their performance was at the dorothy chandler (wittily quipped by the pookie as possibly having meant to be the dorothy chandelier) was in itself an abstract concept to handle. that's where i went to see the operatic babylonian epic "nabucco", by the 19th century italian nationalist, verdi. the dorothy chandler pavilion is the resident venue for the los angeles opera, and former host to the fucking academy awards. sigur rós? dorothy chandler? what the…? surely the ethereal smears of their painterly reverb would bring the quadruply stacked auditorium to a beautifully reversed nihilistic destruction in a shower of crystal, glass, and steel, no? as expected, the audience was comprised of an eclectic assortment of los angelian subversives, in addition to all the pseudo-yuppie asshole fuckwads that saw vanilla sky and came to see "njósnavélin" (a.k.a. the nothing song.) yeah, i'm elitist. yeah, i'm self-righteous. and yeah, i like things that are sacred to me, to stay sacred. and yeah, i pretty much went to hear one song: "hafssól". about three quarters the way through the set, after the audience has been brought to the brink of extinction, only to have been resurrected as the godchildren of sigur rós' molecular reinvention, the bassist extends his right hand to the drummer, and accepts the stick.
"dum, deedley dum, deedly dum, dum." (the drumstick against the bass)
"oh my god." (me)
"dum deedley dum, deedly dum, dum" (the drumstick against the bass, again, over and over, a hypno-trance echo, a call to arms, a synthetic subsonic mantra, a prelude to a beautifully cataclysmic destruction of precepts and perceptions, prejudices and expectations, so that we can start fresh. 'take us back to the beginning, jónsi. lets start this shit from scratch.')
"dum deedley dum, deedly dum, dum."
"dum deedley dum, deedly dum, dum."
to say what happens next would be heresy. listen to the song. but by the time that jónsi has thrashed his frenetically strummed bow across the fret board of his guitar, and by the time hafssól has catapulted into at least 250 bpm, and by the time the string quartet, amina, that backs sigur rós appears as if they will collapse from the intensely taxing responsibility of keeping time with the band, the entire audience is on the brink of a collective panic attack, overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of the sound, and wrought with a cleansing, spiritual meltdown. i have yet to see anyone respond apathetically to
"hafssól". even the deaf can appreciate this.
sigur rós. live. go see them. then you may die.
(michael gardner)
l.a. weekly
it’s easy to describe the crowd that gathered at the dorothy chandler pavilion
to see sigur rós and their instrumental doppelgänger amina last monday
as a well-heeled group of socially conscious young hipsters, down for an event, not
just another gig: rage’s fallen angel zach de la rocha sitting across from violin-toting
goddess lili haydn. the kcrw crew. the intelligentsia. the unruling elite. but the
music? how do you describe a group of artists performing a collection of untitled
songs sung in a mixture of icelandic and english gibberish from an album known only
by the unpronounceable set of brackets on its cover? one is tempted to say that the
show was ^%$#*&^ with songs like “___,” and although there were moments
of lelofaierl, the overall effect was *^*^*^*^*, but that really isn’t doing
sigur rós justice, is it?
so picture yourself in a boat on a river…better yet, an ice floe in an arctic
sea. you are aware of movement but have simultaneous sense of suspended animation.
you see enveloping shadows and blindingly white lights amid floating faces of children
and distant dancing figures. you hear an unrelenting swirl of strings, magnificent
piano and crystalline keyboards, the occasional orchestral cacophony of bowed guitar
atop plodding bass and reluctant drums, all accompanying a virtual choir of angels
emanating from just one man—a fully grown boy soprano named jónsi—singing
lullabies for hibernating polar bears…then thunderous applause as you awake
from your dream state.
integral to their charm, sigur rós’ songs are intentionally abstract
landscapes: fluid, unstructured, indefinable. there simply is no place for a concrete
depiction of reality in their bowl of surreal. the form and the content are one. the
metaphor is the subject. you get it or you don’t. and to say any more than that
really would just be more gibberish.
(liam gowing)
