Sigur Rós @ Madison Square Garden, 02.09.06
I guess I should start by just putting it right out there that I’ve never seen a better show in my life and I may never see another concert as life-changing as this was. First of all, first let me explain how I barely even made it to the concert in the first place. Tickets for the show went on sale at 10 AM on November 10th, and I was up and clicking and managed to get my tickets at 9:50 AM that day, thus securing for myself two tickets in the sixth row of the Theater at Madison Square Garden for the show. However, due to my recently stumbling on hard times financially it appeared as if I wasn’t even going to be able to attend the show, as I couldn’t afford to get myself there. However, in a story of unparalleled heroicism, Stephen, who was my host at UVa when I visited as a prospective last year, refused to let me miss such a life-changing opportunity and managed to get hold of a car from his girlfriend at JMU (first-years at UVa aren’t allowed to have cars), and we decided to embark on the journey of a lifetime. Also, all of this was decided the night before the show at 3 AM, so things were a bit harried and last minute, but everything worked out all the same.
Fast forward 600 miles and 20 hours later, and we’re both sitting in our sixth row seats in Madison Square Garden, bracing ourselves for the greatness we knew we were about to endure. Sigur Ros’ opening band, Amina, an Icelandic female quartet who appear to aspire to become the female equivalent of Sigur Ros, took the stage at 8 PM sharp and proceeded to put on a surprisingly great show to warm up the audience’s palate for a delicious serving of the ‘Ros. Amina played a great set and possess a sound that I’d describe as a slightly more conventional Sigur Ros, in their more concise song lengths and somewhat more traditional song structures, while still featuring that patented Icelandic glacial and epic sound patented by Sigur Ros. The young ladies played a veritable hodgepodge of instruments, playing everything from strings to a vibraphone to these little hand-bell type things (that’s their technical name), and one of them even found not one, but two different ways to make music with a saw in two of their songs. In the first of those two songs, she played the non-serrated edge of the saw with a violin bow, creating a nice complimentary zipping sound, but the highlight came in the final song of the group’s set. In this closing song, the girls threw out all of their signature twinkling and plucking sounds in exchange for an electronic, key-board based song, which featured at center stage one of the girls using a xylophone mallet to play the saw, which she would flex and bend to alter the sound’s pitch. All in all the girls from Amina played a very impressive set, and I really can’t imagine a more perfect band to open for Sigur Ros. I’ve hosted the two best songs from their AniminA EP, which was on sale at the show, to give you guys a taste for their enchanting brand of Icelandic Download the best and final song of their set, “Ammalis”, which was recorded live when the band opened for Sigur Ros in Chicago last September, and keep an ear out for that girl playing the saw at the front of the mix (it’s that crazy “boinggg” noise).
“Hemipode” - Amina
“Blaskjar” - Amina
“Ammalis” (Live) - Amina
Now, onto the main event. Sigur Ros took the stage behind a translucent curtain and stood before bright spotlights which served to project epic shadows on the curtain as the group prepared to take everyone in attendance on an audio-visual odyssey none of them would soon forget. As they set up, a pre-recorded version of “Takk…” played, mounting anticipation until the twinkling opening notes of “Glosoli” kicked in to much applause. After bringing the house down on only the first song, Sigur Ros played “Ny Batteri” before launching (well, actually it was more like twinkling) into “Saeglopur” and “Gong”, two of my favorite tracks from Takk. “Saeglopur” sounded incredible in all it’s xylophonic grandeur, and the epic sound of “Gong” was only amplified tenfold when translated from CD to stage. However, the first true highlight of the show came when the ethereal opening notes of “Hoppipolla” twinkled out over the audience, and the following five minutes of bliss and “Meo Blodnasir”, which is a “Hoppipolla pt. 2″ of sorts, left me in a state of awe-struck paralysis. “Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa”, this website’s namesake, was another epic, and the visual team projected slow-motion scenes from Arni & Kinski’s incredible video for the song (viewable at the band’s website here) onto the backdrop behind the band, making for one of the most memorable songs of the night. See another amazing shot from Brooklyn Vegan, of the band performing “Vidrar Vel”, below:”
Finally, the absolute pinnacle of the show came when Jonsi and company broke out an unexpected treat for the audience, “Staralfur”, which the band rarely plays anymore but just recently saw a surge in popularity after it’s inclusion on the Life Aquatic soundtrack, as well as when Sigur Ros served up a piping hot plate of mesmerization when they performed “Hafsol” in the encore. After “Staralfur”, “an unusually glib and animated Jonsi offered more than his patented ‘Tank yu,’ as he felt compelled to explain the difficulty of counting beats through the irritating stage noise [the result of Billy Joel’s performance upstairs in the arena section of MSG] audible during the otherwise lush and glacial “Heysatan.” This moment — in conjunction with Mr. Birggison humorously fumbling with a lyric crib sheet during the Steve Zissou endorsed “Staralfur” (ironic because so few of his songs contain actual lyrics to forget) — allowed us a rare glimpse at the child-like spirit animating the band’s creative fountainhead” (Stereogum). “Hafsol”, which was originally released on the band’s 1998 debut Von but has since become a live staple, served to put the icing on the cake, and is to date the single most incredible song I’ve ever seen performed live. The song opens with bassist Georg Holm tapping out a 1/32nd note bassline using a drumstick and climaxes in a swirling crescendo of frantic strings, and is guaranteed to put to shame every other song you’ve ever seen live. I mean, dude plays bass with a drumstick, enough said. The only thing I would have changed would have been to close with “Hafsol”, rather than “Untitled #8 (Popplagio)”, which was appropriately incredible but fell short of the majesty bestowed upon the audience by “Hafsol”, and I was also surprised that the band managed to sneak out of MSG without playing their most critically-acclaimed song and fan favorite “Svefn-g-englar”. All in all, as you can probably tell by the amount of hyperbole used and the exhaustive length of this review, but this was easily far-and-away the best show I’ve ever had the privilege to attend. For a much better-written review of this show check out Amrit’s write-up over at Stereogum, and also be sure to check out the rest of Brooklyn Vegan’s fantastic photos from this show.
But wait… there’s more! You may be wondering why I’ve not yet written up the setlist in this post, and the reason is that thanks to Sigur Ros superfan Dan Lynch, I’ve got a near-flawless recording of the entire concert. Dan built a torrent file of his FLAC (free lossless audio content - the highest standard in high-quality recorded audio) format recording and uploaded it to Sigur Ros Torrents, you’re go-to source for all things downloadable Sigur Ros. I downloaded it and converted all of the files to MP3, which I’m making available for download below, and I also created cover art for this live set, which you can view below. So, without further ado, I present to you, courtesy of Dan Lynch, Sigur Ros’ complete Madison Square Garden performance in mp3 format (to download the show in FLAC format, go here to download the torrent).
DOWNLOAD: Sigur Ros: Live at MSG (02.09.06) [follow link]
SETLIST:
1. “Takk/Glosoli”
2. “Ny Batteri”
3. “Saeglopur”
4. “Gong”
5. “Andvari”
6. “Hoppipolla”
7. “Meo Blodnasir”
8. “Se Lest”
9. “Olsen Olsen”
10. “Vidrar Vel Til Loftarasa”
11. “Svo Hljott”
12. “Heysatan”
13. “Staralfur”
Encore 1: “Hafsol”
Encore 2: “Untitled #8 (Popplagio)”
Sorry for the exhaustive length of this post, this show was just far too incredible to pay attention to conciseness.