 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Beacon Theatre, New York September 24, 2001 By C. Bottomley Sigur Ros make no claims except for useless, mindless beauty. The youthful quartet have stressed that their epic songs aren't actually about anything, and singer Jon Thor Birgisson even warbles in a language of his own invention called "Hopelandic." Sophomore album Agaetis Byrjun, clutched to no less a discerning bosom than that of Radiohead's Thom Yorke, is really about throwing guitars, organs, string quartets, and submarine sonar pings against the studio wall and bathing in the returning echo. The resulting disc is indeed an awesome work of aesthetics - a cross between the merciless order of a Bach fugue and the frosted epiphany of Winslow Homer's frozen waves. The Ros live show tried to play to those strengths. The band was starkly immobile throughout like a Nordic Pink Floydsson, except when Birgisson sat down on the stage to strum through "Samskipti," innocently conjuring up a hurricane around a campfire when not playing his guitar with a violin bow. Each song was accompanied by films that found majesty in the face of a sleeping baby or birds on a telephone wire, and flickered like a sputtering candle. The crowd embraced the cathedral-like ambience, shushing anyone who dared speak during a silent moment. And it was interminably boring: 10 songs in two hours, only three from the album everybody in the room owned, no encores, no sense of direction. It began slowly with "Vaka," which built to the first of many crescendoes heard that night, and stayed in first gear throughout. Fans often liken Sigur Ros' music to the primeval landscape of their home island, but they never mention what it could be like to actually cross those hissing geysers and creeping glaciers, without map or light. Twisting restlessly in my seat, I had an idea: cold as hell. Perhaps Sigur Ros are too concerned with avoiding context, although they've hinted their next album will be in English. Right now it feels like we need more than an angelic alto - Birgisson's tonsils glitter like they're coated in mercury - singing deliberate nonsense. Unlike fellow post-rockers Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor! there's no punk rage or sloganeering to songs like "Svefn-g-englar," which live felt as heavily florid as a bad verse play. Or maybe it's simply that without an album length dictating to them, the Ros scramble up musical peak after peak hoping to see an even more gorgeous vista spread before them. It's time to strike out for different territory altogether. On my way home, the streets glistened with rain. Times Square winked gaudily. People shuttled by in taxis on their own private missions. And it was quite beautiful. |
|
|
||
|
> BACK TO THE REVIEWS |
|
|||||
|
|||||||
