sigur rós | "hafsól" | hoppípolla | 2005
tonight anne and i went to the depot in salt lake city to see sigur rós. it was the first live show (besides symphonic, choral, or opera shows) i've been to since i saw the cure at the delta center in the summer of 1992. (what a disappointment that was. i should have gone to see them after the release of seventeen seconds and avoided the throngs shouting, "play 'friday i'm in love'!" [insert reflexive gag here] from the nosebleed section. too bad i was only seven years old and in utah when the seventeen seconds tour happened in europe.) anne was in attendance with me as my date, not really as a fan, but she was certainly converted by the end of the show.
amina, a quartet that accompanies sigur rós live as the string section, opened the show with music of their own. it sounded a lot like ba ba/ti ki/di do in its focus on layering successive loops of various percussive and string instruments. it was very soothing and ethereal, which i needed to distract me from the pain in my lower back. after two hours of standing in place waiting for the show to start my back was killing me. (so middle aged!) i've since acquired the animamina ep and can enjoy its beauty from the sedentary comforts of my couch.
sigur rós really put on a marvelous concert. they were much more energetic and loud live than they are on their albums. they opened with "glósóli" and closed with "hafsól," (which you should be hearing right now) – a fantastic song that i had never heard before, but is, apparently, a staple of their live shows. of course, the intensity of the crescendo is not quite the same on the studio recording as it was live, which can make the live experience seem almost completely different from what you can hear on the single. but that's not to say that the recorded version is not great in its own way.
anne was impressed by the complex timing of "heysátan," a quiet song about an old icelandic hay farmer dying peacefully in his field. she also liked the artistic nature of the light show, which included a gossamer-thin curtain at times pulled in front of the band that acted as a see-through screen for clips of film reminiscent of the album art, like this:
before the concert began, i was watching all the indie kids in their subculture uniforms being served chic-looking shots by scantily clad, skanky waitresses and feeling a little out-of-place. i thought of my kids in park city (where our family was vacationing) and wondered why i had decided to leave them for this tortured and transparent "scene". once the music started, though, all my concerns about the emotionally disturbed lives so casually put on display around me were washed out to sea and i was so glad i had gone.
