Sigur Rós casts an otherworldly spell at the Fox Theater
Roy Jurgens on
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Sigur Rós perform liturgical music for a religion yet to be discovered for a God that is yet to be worshipped. Monday’s cathedral was Pomona’s Fox Theater, a beautiful old Art Deco-style movie house that performed alongside the Icelandic band’s cinematic din.
The Icelandic trio presented two sets of songs, wisely punctuated by a 20-minute intermission that helped cleanse the aural palate. The first set featured a slow burn, with the sonic sunrise of “Glósóli” being the highlight. Combined within Sigur Rós’ the simple melodic structures, is an ebb and flow of tension and release, with painstaking attention paid to pacing each song to its climax. The second set got progressively heavier, with the thunderous “Kveikur” delivering the enraptured crowd to state of bliss.
They were being treated to a show that featured stadium-level production within the confines of a 2,000-capacity theater. Behind the complex lighting array were a series of vast projections, each manipulated to represent a natural feature of the ecologically diverse and volcanically active North Atlantic rock from which they hail.
Amid a massive tetris of glowing neon tubes, singer/guitarist Jónsi Birgisson warbled in his trademark Icelandic/Hopelandic. It mattered little that not a soul could fathom what Birgisson was actually saying, as his detached alien falsetto dripped with stirring melancholia, immediate and yet otherworldly. Using a cellist’s bow to skillfully evoke waves of shimmer and squall from his battered Ibanez Les Paul copy, Birgisson splashed sound upon the sparse canvas that drummer Orri Páll Dýrason and bassist Georg Hólm patiently constructed for him.
The facial expressions that a Sigur Rós show draws from its audience are unlike anything you’d ever see at a “rock” show. There are tears flowing openly, there are stares frozen in awe, and then there are eyes tightly shut, bathing within the sonic waves swirling between 20 Hz and 20 kHz. The spiritual response this band evokes burrows within the crowd’s core being whilst simultaneously radiating a full body halo externally. There was a noticeable lack of cellphones held being aloft and amazingly, there was an exceptional lack of meaningless chatter among the SoCal crowd, because after all, they were at church.
Born in Reykjavik 23 years ago, Sigur Rós are seemingly in a celebratory stage of their career. With no new album in immediate sight, they’ve been touring as a stripped-down trio since 2013. This week’s foray accompanying the L.A. Philharmonic is keenly interesting, but will it inspire the band to grow from the tried and true formula they’ve been flogging these many years? Let’s be honest, Sigur Rós is pretty much a one-trick pony. But, oh what a heavenly, sparkly, pretty pony are they.
Sigur Ros opens Thursday with the first of three consecutive nights alongside the L.A. Philharmonic as part of Reykjavík Festival at Disney Hall.
[…] and more at the Empire Polo Club. But you knew that. [Set times at the end of this post.] ► Sigur Ros does the first of three nights with the L.A. Phil at Disney Hall. ► Composer Hans Zimmer does a […]