Almost without exception, the audience appears pleased. Sigur Rós’ music is soothing, soaring, and unique, but it’s not always easy listening. Jónsi’s voice, though subtle, can boil into something more closely resembling a scream. The dissonance that makes their sound so exciting can grate the uninitiated ear. And there is no ear less initiated to the intricacies of rock and roll than that of an elderly Icelandic woman. Take Kjarii’s grandmother, who, according to their tour diary, turned up for one of the shows but later decided to watch it on TV. After she turned it on, saw the flashing lights, and heard the feedback of her grandson’s band, she believed the TV was going to explode and promptly turned it off.

Despite the desire for entertainment, the overwhelmingly eager reception shown by audiences from Ólafsvík to Kirkjubæjarklaustur is slightly perplexing. “I don’t think Icelandic people understand it any better than people from anywhere else,” says Orri, echoing a sentiment from Georg’s description of the raging Icelandic music scene. “There is a very big music scene, but a lot of the bands are just what you would expect to find in any city.” He admits that the musicians who have made it outside of Iceland—Björk, Múm, and his own band—are unconventional. “I have no idea why,” he adds.

Fatalism, the doctrine that all events are subject to fate or inevitable predetermination, permeates Sigur Rós’ approach to music-making. The band hardly speaks when writing a song, preferring instead to improvise until it feels right. The foursome is fond of happy accidents, as Orri’s story of joining the band aptly demonstrates. “I was rehearsing in the next room and they asked me if I wanted to play,” he recalls. “So we played for a while, and then they asked me if I wanted to be in the band. It all happened very naturally.” Their flowing, ghostly sound embodies this kind of mysticism—as though the universe has drawn a plan and they should just sit back and watch.

This easy-going, happy-go-lucky ethos is accompanied by a diligent sense of composition and a very particular taste. The group meets just once every two or three years to construct its meticulous albums, but the four are constantly working on or tweaking material and recording endless layers of sound. During the filming of Heima, they picked up some interesting new sounds. In the town of Husafell, they asked an old friend, Páll Guðmundsson, who spends his days wandering the hills, collecting materials for hand-made instruments, to join them in the show. Guðmundsson brought out his all-stone marimba, a percussional instrument played using mallets. He had collected the stones based on the tone they make when struck, and arranged them according to note. The result was a haunting, primitive sound, around which Sigur Rós improvised a stunningly beautiful song.

Along the way, they played with an Icelandic tenor and a marching band as well as several other musicians and friends. Their sound appears to blend effortlessly with these walk-ins, but the members insist that they do not consciously channel traditional Icelandic sounds. When asked whether, perhaps unconsciously, they’ve been influenced by their country’s musical heritage, Georg shows indifference: “Maybe. I don’t know.”

If they aren’t exactly the lead propagators of traditional Icelandic sounds (the majority of which are in a style called kveða and recite epic poems known as rímur), they are legends in the country’s contemporary music scene. “Everyone is very close,” Orri says. “We have a big studio, so if someone needs to borrow an instrument or an amp, they come to us. The scene is very small.” Yet the band’s 2006 homecoming concert in Reykjavik was the biggest in Iceland’s history. It proved that their fan base is broad, and that to some extent, they are seen as ambassadors to the outside world.

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Posted to Music Features on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 by kristena.

Tags: , Sigur Ros