As well as being one of the most successful post-rock bands in the world, Sigur Rós are also among the most enigmatic. Playing the first of two nights in London, they shuffled onstage with heads bowed, dressed all in black – hard to read and deadly serious. Their challenging tunes almost lost the audience’s patience in the first half but emerged sublimely powerful in the second.
By structuring their performance around an intermission, Sigor Rós have themselves to blame for the comparison. The break was welcome in a marathon two-hour-and-a-half set, bravely performed by lead singer Jonsi Birgisson, bassist Georg Hólm and with Kjartan Sveinsson on the keyboard.
Dipping liberally into their 2002 album (), Sigur Rós began their gig with the impression of an Icelandic glacier: grandiose, brutal, and inching slowly along. Singing partly in Hopelanic, a made-up language full of gibberish words, Birgisson sung album opener Vaka in primal yowls and the full-throated falsetto that is his trademark. Even when playing tracks with busier drums and crashing guitar, such as Ný batterí, the effect was angsty and tense, rendering the audience immobilised.
But then, like the clouds parting above an Icelandic fjord, the band entered the second half with optimism and energy. Glockenspiel and xylophone shimmered amid heavy torrents of reverbed guitar on Sæglópur and Andvari, both from the slightly poppier 2005 album Takk (Thanks). The expansive sound was accompanied on screens by rolling waves, constellations and green aurora borealis, all earthly power and celestial awe.
It is strange that the band largely shirked songs from their more accessible later albums, which did much better in the UK charts. Likewise, crowd favourites such as Olsen Olsen and Hoppípolla – the song that, much to the band’s chagrin, became the soundtrack to endless UK TV adverts around the 2010 mark – were not to be found. I suspect it is because their performance was for no-one except their most loyal fans; it is impressive that Birgisson managed to address the crowd entirely in Icelandic aside from a cursory ‘hello’, though how many of even their most ardent supporters have taken the time to learn that language, of which there are only around 350,000 speakers worldwide, is anyone’s guess.
But perhaps a band that is known for breaking musical moulds has no business trying to fit in. Sigur Rós created amazingly rich textures in their sound, for instance the way Birgisson distorted his voice by singing through the strings of his guitar during Svefn-g-englar. And how he then played this guitar with a bow. When the experiments work, this band is unstoppable.
