BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Jon Thor
Birgisson of Icelandic band Sigur Rós displays his
singing prowess while playing his electric guitar with a violin
bow.
By Mary Williams
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Bands that expand the listener’s notion of what music can
do are often said to be “like Radiohead.”
Sigur Rós is better than that. Their innovative, achingly
beautiful sound reinvents the meaning of “alternative”
rock, and listeners may see how the two bands influenced each
other, but they are far more than Radiohead rip-offs.
The group maintains some of the basic traditions of rock, like a
4/4 time signature and the core elements of guitar, bass, drums and
vocals, but adds other sounds and tones to the mix. Sigur Rós
creates music that, despite being better than most of what can be
heard on the radio, will never actually receive airplay.
The band performed the first of two consecutive shows Friday at
the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills to audiences struck by the
beauty of their songs. Sitting perfectly still, not even bobbing
their heads to the strong beat, the listeners focused on the four
men onstage during the songs, and erupted into loud cheering
afterwards.
Jon Thor Birgisson, the singer and guitarist of the Icelandic
group, took root in front of his microphone, playing his electric
guitar with a violin bow and singing with his eyes squeezed shut
and his face contorted.
The strange sound that emerged from his guitar was the heart of
the band’s unorthodox music. Drawing the bow slowly across
the strings at first, then speeding up as the songs reached their
crescendos, he created a variety of unusual sounds with an
instrument that lately has been subjected to conventionalism in
generic rock songs.
When Birgisson opened his mouth to sing, his voice was equally
unusual. Even if the audience had understood Birgisson’s
language, it’s unlikely that they could have understood his
lyrics. Singing and repeating sounds more than words, his vocals
became another instrument, fluctuating in tone and volume like his
guitar.
Accompanying him were bassist Georg Holm, drummer Agust and
Kjartan Sveinsson, who played a variety of instruments including
keyboards, organ, flute and electric guitar.
With a deeply cinematic quality, the songs were weighty and
passionate without being showy.
The members of the group never said a word to the audience,
never paused long between songs and didn’t move much while
playing. Rather than attracting attention by jumping up and down
and yelling out to the crowd, the musicians kept the eyes of the
audience glued to the stage by practicing their art and playing one
outstanding song after another.
The melodies were desolate, reflecting like the band’s
sparsely populated homeland of Iceland and the singer’s
voice, backed by richly textured instruments, evoked images of
howling wind over a barren landscape.
Crucial to the tone of the show were the projections that
flashed behind the band as they played.
Distorted images, fading in and out of focus, added to the
powerful and beautiful effect of the music. Such everyday sights as
birds lined up on a wire, flying away one by one and eventually all
leaving the shot, added to the breathtaking quality of the
music.
Both natural in their subject and unnatural in their depiction
““ faded, with reversed colors or otherwise distorted ““
the films mirrored the music, which morphed between eeriely inhuman
and passionate.
The combination of all these factors made the show more of an
experience than a concert. At the end of it, the audience gave a
well-deserved standing ovation to the band, who showed their smiles
for the first time that evening as they walked offstage. When the
audience wouldn’t sit down or stop cheering, the band
returned twice more to bow and wave to the crowd, their coy grins
revealing their pleasure but not oversized egos. After soaking up
the admiration of the thrilled crowd for the last time, they waved
again, clapped a little in return, and left.
Perhaps in the future, that audience will rave about other
groups by saying they’re “like Sigur Rós.”
It would be a high compliment indeed.