escalating between noise and melody: “sigur ros” were in the gasometer.
there are bands that are praised by countless people and you can’t really see why from the outside. “sigur ros” is such a band. when i was at the sziget festival in hungary in 2016, i wanted to pursue this hype about “sigur ros” and well, i failed due to the circumstances. i saw sigur ros in daylight on the main stage and seeing a visual driven group in daylight not only makes little sense, it also makes such concept bands worse than they probably are. so you can’t rate this performance back then and a second chance was needed. the second chance should now take place in autumn 2022, and i was really curious if i would understand this group years later.
as „sure praise“ When I entered the stage in the gasometer in Vienna that evening, I was more than excited. the stage design looked promising, now only the music has to appeal to me. and well, I don’t know what I was expecting, but it turned out exactly the way I didn’t want it to. there were cracking numbers that filled the hall without any melodies, there were melodious numbers that stretched like chewing gum and quickly became washed out again. i was looking for a hit, for a song that could have become my catchy tune (and that i could film for my instagram story) but somehow nothing came up.
so at some point i gave up and tried to focus on other things during the concert. I tried to find emotion and indeed there was emotion on the singer’s face, but I wasn’t sure if he was expressing his devotion to the music or if he was in some kind of pain. in general, i had trouble recognizing whether the group was having fun at all.
probably the only fun was playing the guitar with the violin bow. namely in the wildest way! but the normal guitar playing seemed at least a bit fun for the band members, although i sometimes had my doubts as to whether the cramped posture was really intentional.
what i always found beautiful was the stage design, the visuals, the light. everything seemed very harmonious and beautiful and I was a bit sad that I couldn’t experience/perceive/feel the merging of what I saw with what I heard like very bad post-rock/shoegaze fans.
towards the end i was glad to have been present at this concert. because finally i had seen “sigur ros” in the right setting, i finally had good photos of a sigur ros concert and finally i was able to clarify for myself once and for all that post-rock concerts are just not for me. my ear canals just weren’t programmed to it.