A year after the release of their seventh album, Valtari, the Icelandic post-rockers glide into Glasgow’s SECC to play a show so anticipated it sold out six months in advance.
Before we get to tonight’s main event however one-man support act Blanck Mass raises some important questions: to what extent do space noises constitute a set? And how do you soundcheck a Mac?
Purple rings swirl over the curtain or hover menacingly but his directionless ambient soundscapes offer little more than backdrop over which the audience chatter excitedly and it mostly feels like he’s here to test the A/V for the show ahead.
When a band plays a venue as large as SECC there’s always a risk they’ll shrink and disappear in its cavernous depths but tonight Sigur Ros are in total command.
They’re a band of few words, leaving their music to do the talking for fear of breaking the spell but it seems as if the audience are rapt from the opening bars of ‘Yfirboro’ onwards.
On stage they stand in front of a billowing curtain that is then projected onto from behind, a trick that works remarkably effectively, casting the group as ghostly spectres amidst the images of leaf veins and pine forests.
Built on layers of bowed guitar and downbeat piano, their music is incredibly immersive, allowing you to drift away amidst the soaring melancholy of ‘Saeglopur’ and ‘Ny Batteri’, that cast the beauty of nature against music than manages to take in rock, jazz, ambient and even industrial.
It’s kept coherent by a common sense of exploration and spiralling wonder and some impressive musicianship.
Lead-vocalist Jonsi is widely regarded as having one of the worlds most impressive and unique voices but Sigur Ros’ secret weapon is undoubtedly drummer Orri Páll Dýrason’s immense grooves.
Whether delivering gentle brushstrokes or Led Zeppelin-like grooves he’s an enormous talent, playing with supreme power and taste and driving his bandmates efforts to even greater heights on tracks from almost all of their records.
An early highlight is ‘Igaer’, whose creepy fairground organ motif, gives way to an enormous, emotive wall-of-sound.
What’s most amazing however is the range of emotion the group can convey even when the audience cannot understand a single word.
Like Arcade Fire they’re masters of the sort of warm, fuzzy headrush that can only be delivered on a massive scale, yet to do it with songs that offer no specific lyrical concern to attach yourself to is an even more astonishing feat.
After five songs the curtain falls to reveal a large screen onto which are cast images of leaves, flames and drowning bodies; distorted, fleeting and impermanent, as the band themselves reach higher and higher.
It’s an impressive feat that re-defines the relationship between art and music in the live sphere and throws up curious juxtapositions of sound and form.
Their most famous song is, of course, ‘Hoppipolla’ and augmented by both a trio of brass and a trio of strings the group do not disappoint.
As the backdrop changes to a shower of sparks, people throw their hands in the air, couples kiss and it’s hard to imagine any other band in the world capable of doing what Sigur Ros do so well.
Ending on the hypnotic guitar figure of ‘Popplagio’, the eleven musicians take a bow then vanish, leaving an emotionally drained crowd to spill out into the night, unsure quite what they’ve witnessed but certain that it was a rock show like no other.
Words: Max Sefton
Photos: Simon Jones
