Here's a quick geography lesson: despite evidence to the contrary, Iceland really is just an island nation and not a planet in some far-off galaxy.
Scott Spychalski Jónsi
To be fair, it's not like the land of fire and ice has gone out of its way to reinforce this fact. When your country's highway construction is routinely rerouted to avoid bulldozing suspected elf colonies, it's fair to assume you're operating on a slightly different plane than the rest of the world. I mean, c'mon - even their volcanoes shoot giant purple lightning bolts. That ain't natural.
On Thursday night at Liberty Hall in Lawrence, Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi - touring in support of his first solo album, Go - proved that his homeland's eccentricities and epic beauty are the lifeblood of his music and live show. The result: a concert that was equal parts live theater, multimedia performance art and, perhaps most notably, emotionally stirring rock show.
Following an all-acoustic opener by Death Vessel frontman Joel Thibodeau that served as a nice lo-fi juxtaposition to what was about to transpire, Jónsi, clad in white and multicolored tattered strings, and his backing band took the stage with little fanfare, but Jónsi's trademark vocals sliced through the silence quickly.
His voice truly is amazing to witness in person, not only for its endurance (singing that high and that throaty with no noticeable fatigue for an entire tour must be hell on the vocal chords), but also for its underrated dexterity - there's a simple beauty in his normal, lower singing voice that's often overshadowed by his much more prevalent falsetto. Credit also needs to be given to his backing band - particularly percussionist þorvaldur þorvaldsson - who helped blur any recognizable line between old band and new solo work.
With Sigur Rós on indefinite hiatus, the obvious question is whether Jónsi's solo set can achieve the same sort of bombastic, near-cinematic quality his former band's live shows were so well known for. The answer is an unequivocal "yes," and then some, thanks in no small part to the work of Fifty Nine Productions, the animation and theater design company tasked with crafting a stage show that complimented and merged seamlessly with the nature- and animal-related themes of Jónsi's music. And all on Earth Day, nonetheless.
Liberty Hall's stage - which seemed a tad cramped for such a production - was transformed into a burned-down, sepia-toned taxidermy shop, replete with twisted metal backdrop and projector screens subtly designed to look like broken-glassed window panes. Much like Sigur Rós's Takk tour a few years ago, the set made brilliant use of multiple layers of semitransparent sheets, as well as the smoky glass, to bounce a mix of computer-generated and real-life footage across almost every surface of the stage.
This mastery of lighting and depth of field was deliriously engaging: what two seconds before was just a piece of dirty glass in the background suddenly became the backdrop for a slow-burning fire, or a flood, or an animated chase between a black-and-white line-art deer and wolf. It's the end of the end of the end, Jónsi declared on "Sinking Friendships" as the towering glass canyons slowly filled with churning, shifting water. By the end of the song, you wondered if those windows would break lose and prove him right.
Theatrics of this scale run the risk of overshadowing the music itself. On rare occasion it did, but Fifty Nine Productions realized two critical points. The first was when to tone it down, and on acoustic tracks such as "Stars in Still Water," a little backlighting from a couple of carefully placed canister lights created more than enough ambience.
The second was that most of Jónsi's solo work is buoyant and (gasp!) pop-driven, punctuated less by the soft-loud-crashing-soft dynamic that defined Sigur Rós' sixteen-year history (the obvious exception being the closing track, "Around Us," which crescendoed with such ferocity it felt like Liberty Hall might actually be blown off its foundation). As such, for example, the image of an animal picture book igniting and slowly burning away to reveal a decimated forest in the background provided something for your parietal lobe to chew on while the rest of your brain absorbed the emotion in the music. Pretentious? Maybe a little -- but beautiful nonetheless.
What's a bit depressing about seeing Jónsi shine so spectacularly on his own is the realization that, despite the undeniable talents of the rest of his old band, the soul of Sigur Rós clearly lives in the voice of its lead singer. It would be very sad if post-rock's most quintessential never reunited, but if Thursday's show was any indication, the change might not be that noticeable after all.
Setlist:
1. Stars in Still Water
2. Hengilas
3. Icicle Sleeves
4. Kolnidur
5. Tornado
6. Sinking Friendships
7. Saint Naïve
8. K12
9. Go Do
10. Boy Lilikoi
11. New Patato Song
12. Around Us
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Sorry about that -- I realized my notes were wonky after the review went up and asked them to update it, but it looks like that didn't happen. Thanks for the correct setlist.
Fantastic show.
But the setlist you listed is all kinds of wrong.
This is the proper one:
Stars in Still Water
Hengil�
Icicle Sleeve
Kolni�
Tornado
Sinking Friendships
Saint Naive
K12
Go Do
Boy Lilikoi
New Piano Song
Around Us
Encore:
Animal Arithmetic
Grow Till Tall
Encore 2:
Happy Birthday
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