Sigur Rós review: Icelandic trio thrill in Dublin with backing of 41-piece orchestra
A file image of Jonsi Birgisson of Sigur Ros, who play two gigs in Dublin this week. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
★★★★☆
The beautifully alien music of Icelandic indie trio Sigur Rós was given a majestic makeover at BGE Theatre in Dublin with the thunderous assistance of the 41-piece Ulster Orchestra. Songs that weren’t exactly understated to begin with were transformed into pulsating pop supernovas, while a boy’s choir gave the evening the feeling of an apocalyptic take on from The Snowman.
Everyone who is anyone in rock music has played with an orchestra at some point, from The Beatles to Metallica. But Sigur Rós’ sound - as fierce as a storm, as vast and mysterious as a glacier - is already primed with the maximalist intensity of classical music. And so this collaboration felt more like a natural alliance than two different worlds crashing together.
Sigur Rós have been on the road with their orchestra tour for the last year, working with local companies in different countries. It’s a good way to save on air miles, but also a strategy that brings a local accent to their gauzy, starry music.
The first of two sold-out nights in the Dublin docklands venue was, above all, a reminder of the mystifying strangeness of Sigur Rós. Iceland’s biggest export since Björk have carved a space in the middle ground between a heavy-metal rock opera and a chapter in which Frodo wanders the woods thinking of elves.
That unique blend of cinematic and bombastic has made them highly sought-after by filmmakers. It is no accident that their commercial breakthrough came when the sublimely otherworldly soundtracked David Attenborough’s on the BBC. They are, in a way, the David Attenboroughs of epic folk-pop - their songs brimming with both ancient wisdom and a tooth-and-claw intensity.
But bigger is not always better. There was always the danger that adding an orchestra to this already overwrought repertoire would bring the entire edifice crashing down. In fact, the opposite happened. The sheer scale of the performance accentuated the moments of silence and contemplation that have long been crucial to Sigur Rós. As the typhoon roared, those instances of respite hit the hardest.
The concert began in darkness and then reached for the light. As the orchestra tuned up, under the baton of conductor Robert Ames, Sigur Rós singer Jónsi, still boyish at 50, strolled on and tiptoed his way into Blóðberg, from what the band describe as their “sparse, floaty and beautiful” 2023 album,
Moody illumination accentuated the sense of stepping through a portal to another universe. Early on, the stage was doused in black except for a spotlight on Jónsi, so that he looked all alone amidst the throng. Later, a red haze descended, framing “hits” such as from their 1999 breakthrough and from 2002’s which opened with a droning piano and then, like fireworks over a graveyard, blazed ominously.
The David Attenborough moment came towards the end as conjured mental images of elephants forlornly wandering the Serengeti. As it did so, Jónsi crooned like a heavy-metal choirboy, and the orchestra moved from a final crescendo to a shrieking silence that felt like the loudest thing the audience had heard all night. When the lights went up, it was like waking from a dream or coming up for air.
- Sigur Rós play BGE Theatre Monday, August 7
