Sigur Ros The Beacon Theater Sept 12, 2005 Written and Photographed by Evan Sung

Amina

What happens when Stadium Rock collides with existential angst? Something resembling a Sigur Ros concert I’m willing to bet. In honor of their new album “Takk” Sigur Ros brought their sweeping melancholia to Beacon Theater this week.
First off, the big discovery of the evening had to be Amina, who has been with Sigur Ros all tour long. Four girls who play everything from a Power Mac, to a cello, to wine-glasses of water, to a saw. Yes…a saw. Like time-travelling blip-rockers stranded in a Victorian attic, the girls apparently decided to make the most of their temporal dislocation and start making music. Of course, they are opening for Sigur Ros, so when I say music, I mean the kind of soothing, ambient soundscapes that Sigur Ros fans expect at a Sigur Ros concert. Still, there was something compelling and bizarre in the way this foursome cobbled their mysterious music out of forgotten and found instruments. And they were not without their sense of humour. They finished their set by “rocking out” – which meant a sped up Casio backbeat to make the head nod or toe tap, while one of the girls hammered out a tune on a steel saw. It was cute and inventive and just right for setting Sigur Ros’ stage.

Sigur Ros

Sigur Ros are shy guys. The Greta Garbos of Gobbledy-rock. Their last album, “()” was unpronounceable, the lyrics incomprehensible, and the liner notes non-existent. Every act seems calculated to evade attention and skirt understanding. Naturally, people huddle in closer, the further they draw away. A white curtain was pulled across the stage for the first song, literally hiding the band. Only stagelights casting towering shadows on the curtain wall gave indication of the band behind the sound. As if the bandmembers themselves were hollow, unknowable men standing behind their music.

The curtain was pulled back for the rest of the concert but the band insisted on playing in the shadows. The somnolent legatos and slow crescendo to a brief, inevitable explosion of soaring emotion characterize much of Sigur Ros’ songwriting, and offered the only real glimpse of the band as the lighting quickly, brightly swept across the stage.

The concert’s pivotal moment was a song, title unknown to this writer and most of the fans in attendance, played against a projection of porcelain dolls’ eyes. Creepy but beautiful, the dolls’ faces swept across the screen, staring out into the crowd. Just as the song seemed to be building to its climax, the projection freezes, and the band stops playing. As the silence stretched out, people began to be unsure of whether the song had ended or something had gone wrong. A Cage-ian exercise in the sound of silence, the audience began to whisper clucks of appreciation, and the whole meaning of what it is to be at a concert seemed to be thrown into question. After about sixty seconds, the music abruptly resumed to thunderous applause.

If drugs didn’t exist, the music of Sigur Ros would likely inspire men to its creation. Something to capture the kind of half-asleep, half-awake feeling of sensory expansiveness. Sigur Ros may not be the soundtrack to our lives, but it is something close to the soundscape of our dreams.