Sigur Ros Tour 2013

Sigur Rós ‘Kveikur’ Tour 2013

Date: 20 November 2013

Location: Brighton Centre, Brighton

Support: i break horses

Special guests: n/a

The Wednesday just gone, I saw what is most likely to be the last concert I see until mid February. This is still very hard for me to write and I’m not entirely sure that I can survive for that long, so wish me luck. Anyway, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this one in quite a few ways. I know all of Sigur Rós’ albums, but I didn’t entirely know how the music was going to translate to a live setting. Add to that how they’re always right at the top of those ‘best live acts’ list and I was really quite intrigued about the entire evening.

I was kept in suspense for quite a while. Though doors opened at 6.30pm, the band didn’t come on stage until 9. There was a half-hour set by a support act, though, which I checked out. They were called ‘i break horses’ (no uppercase letters on the sign, anyway) and were a Swedish duo who hid themselves behind a translucent white curtain and played computerised, soundscapey music which was both beautiful and futuristic; a good complement to the headliners. I was particularly interested by the breathy, ethereal vocals they put on top of quite a few of their tracks, and I definitely would investigate further.

I’d thought that the white curtain would have been for them, either because they always used it or so that nobody could properly see the stage until Sigur Rós took the stage, but when they did, they kept it hiding them for the first couple of songs. They began with the new ‘Yfirboro’ and the () song ‘Vaka’, which happens to be one of my favourites, two very light and minimalistic songs, and the whole effect was so tantalising, because you could just about see them moving around and you could hear them playing but at the same time you knew that they were just holding themselves back from being so much more intense.

And then they were. As the second song finished they launched straight into ‘Brennisteinn’, a track for which they pulled out all the stops when it came to power, and as they did so, the curtain dropped to the floor in a perfectly timed movement, revealing the stage and band behind it.

The first thing that struck me was how many of them there were – I counted eleven in total, despite there being only three official band members these days, and even more impressive was that a lot of them played a range of instruments as the concert drew on. The stage was literally packed with equipment and it was really quite surprising they were able to move around. But as well as the instruments, there were a good twenty old fashioned lanterns scattered around the stage, looking exactly like giant candles, creating a great atmosphere, more personal, less artificial and more eye-catching than the huge, brightly coloured swirling lights that changed colour every so often and shone down on everyone from above the stage.

The headline act themselves didn’t play for much more than an hour and a half, but they packed everything they possibly could into that time. There was very little talking and the breaks between songs were short, which meant you never really came back down to reality after all the crazy places the music was taking you. I was impressed that they managed to keep the atmosphere, and the audience’s attention, for pretty much the whole time without a break, whether the focus was on the video screens at the back or the lights at the front or the players themselves.

I thought the mix of albums that songs came from was pretty excellent. I can’t pronounce any of the titles and so couldn’t tell anyone what the songs were, but was able to think to myself ‘Ah, that’s the hoppy song from the tacky album…’ and keep a relatively good idea of what was going on (of course, I’m talking about ‘Hoppipolla’ from Takk…’) They played quite a lot of songs from the new album, as well as a good (and fairly similar) amount of older stuff. This was good for two reasons: firstly, I think the new album is definitely one of their best, and secondly, there was a great balance of moods and styles, between the untarnished magical beauty of their early music and the darker intensity of what they’ve been doing recently. 1997’s ‘Von’ was the only album that didn’t get a look in, and although it would have been nice to tick off all of them, there’s nothing I would have wanted taken out in order to include something from there.

I was disappointed when they left the stage after playing the main set that we hadn’t heard anything at all from ‘Agaetis byrjun’, which has so many great songs on it, but when they returned to play the (first) encore, Jonsi Birgisson quietly stated that they were now going to play something that they hadn’t played live in years, and it turned out to be… the title track from that album! Which is only my favourite from the entire thing. So, that was an incredibly welcome surprise, and to finish off we were treated with a stunning extended rendition of ‘Popplagio’, which I’d probably have to pick as the highlight, obvious choice as it may be, because of how they all so masterfully handled the song’s build up, turning it into a spectacular concert finish.

So overall, it probably wasn’t what I expected, because I expected them to have Something, some sort of strange gimmick that made their concerts different to everyone else’s and that got people to remember them. What I actually got was better. They didn’t do anything flashy, they just played their music the best they possibly could and let it speak for themselves. And for those ninety minutes, it was really easy to forget that you were standing in the middle of a large hall in a conference centre in Brighton. You could just as easily have been in Sigur Rós’ home land of Iceland, lying under an unpolluted night sky, or any number of other beautiful places that I’ve never been to and possibly never will. But for one evening, Sigur Rós made that feel possible. That’s the thing that sets them apart.

After the concert, I walked to the hotel next door and got into bed. It was the shortest journey back from a concert ever.