It hardly matters whether Birgisson’s singing in gibberish (critics dubbed this approach “Hopelandic”) or his native Icelandic - at a Sigur Rós show, we’re all speaking in tongues. For many (myself included), the Sigur Rós live show is a transportive, communal experience, a sort of secular church service - instead of the Holy Spirit, we’re moved by the band’s intangible force, their delicate balancing act of violent aggression and hypnotic respite. And when coherent sentences failed, they simply gushed: “They sound like god weeping tears of gold in heaven,” wrote Melody Maker.īut most fans wouldn’t argue with that description. When all else failed, they used Icelandic imagery as descriptors, comparing Birgisson’s guitar tone to a drifting, gargantuan glacier. Dumbfounded, critics searched for an easy comparison - lumping the band with acts like Mogwai and Gospeed You! Black Emperor in the “post-rock” scene - even though this sound was clearly unlike anything they’d ever heard. Over lush orchestrations, Georg Hólm’s whale-moan bass, and Kjartan Sveinsson’s ornate keyboards, we meet Birgisson - singing in an ethereal falsetto, sawing at his electric guitar with a cello bow (a la Jimmy Page) to conjure black-magic drones. Arriving two years after the tentative ambient soundscapes of Von, Agaetis cemented the band’s sonic trademarks and signaled a jaw-dropping creative re-birth.
“I think it’s beautiful.”Īnd Agaetis Byrjun’s sprawling majesty warranted such cockiness. “You’re young and full of energy and have this cockiness,” he said. He responded with laughter, reflecting on his band’s formative years with a nostalgic glow. I am Axl Rose I am Jim Morrison I am Jimi Hendrix.'”) Still, that sort of sentiment felt awfully strange coming from the mild-mannered frontman of an obscure Icelandic post-rock band.ĭuring a recent Q+A - five studio albums and 14 years after the fact - Spin presented Birgisson with that quote. (Among other quotable tidbits, Kanye West recently told W Magazine, “I’m the No. And don’t think we can’t do it, we will.” As we all know, that kind of overblown arrogance isn’t unusual in the pop music mainstream.
Back in 1999, the year Sigur Rós released their international breakthrough, Agaetis Byrjun, Jón Þór “Jónsi” Birgisson wrote the following mission statement on his band’s website: “We are not a band, we are music … We are simply gonna change music forever, and the way people think about music.
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