Sorry for the delay. I was with Sigur Rós.
I just finished working for 13 days in a row, with the last of those days being the same as a concert I was lucky to attend. Sigur Rós is a band from Iceland that plays a lot of mellow tunes. I couldn’t believe how friendly the crowd at this show was. Very kind, very soft spoken. I actually bumped into two people who I hadn’t seen since I graduated from high school in 2001 (though I expected one, thanks to that crazy Facebook news ticker). The show started with a fantastic opening act: One of the background trombone players (Helgi Jonsson) was given the opportunity to come out and play several songs on his guitar as well as one of the organs on stage. If you didn’t know any better, you would have almost sworn that it was actually Thom Yorke of Radiohead in a wig. The guys voice and playing was incredible.
The number of musicians on stage peeked near the end of the main ticket, with something close to 3 keyboard/xylophone players, 4 violinist, 5 brass, probably 3 guitarist (including the lead vocalist)…. I might be off a little on the numbers, but it was a spectacular show! Part of me regrets leaving at the next to last song, but it was pouring rain, my girlfriend had very little sleep the previous night and she had another nearly sleepless night around the corner. Time was of the essence.
Here is the song they started their set off with. It is called “Svefn g englar”, which means “Sleepwalkers” in English. Enjoy!
I was looking around and also discovered they have a movie out, called Heima. Here’s one of the trailers for it. The climax in the song near the end gave me chills.
Friday, June 13th, 2008