The Sigur Rós performance at Boston’s Boch Wang Center with the 41-person Wordless Music Orchestra was the ethereal, spiritually rejuvenating live music experience that leaves your jaw on the floor and gratitude for being alive that every single person deserves to experience at least once in their lives. Over two sets, the Icelandic Avant-Garde, Ambient Post-Rock outfit covered a wide swath of their back catalog, dusting off fan favorites while paying significant attention to their more recent output.
Frontman Jónsi Birgisson sings and plays an electric guitar, Goggi Hólm does play bass but if readers are under the impression that Sigur Rós is anything resembling a conventional Sirius XM type of act, they’re deeply mistaken.
Jónsi‘s fondness for sawing away at his guitar strings with a bow imbues their tone with an ever-present droning more commonly found in Classical Indian music than Rock ‘n’ Roll and his masterful control of that falsetto pitch lifts listeners off their feet.
Over the years, Sigur Rós has taken to the road in a plethora of musical formations and while some have had their advantages over others, none were as obviously appropriate as a complete orchestral accompaniment. The absolute highlight of the evening was a performance of “Se Lest,” leading into “Hoppipolla,” both off of 2005’s Takk… that simply couldn’t have been done as it had without the full strength of a Musical Battalion. Sigur Rós has certainly thrived in the more minimalist corners of their catalog, but what’s so important in their sound is an undertone of bittersweet triumph that enables the transformational power of their music and that was more apparent on “Hopipolla” than anywhere else they played.
Three of the first four songs of the night were either off their most recent release, Átta (released (on 6/16/23) or 2012’s Valtari, but the absolute highlight of the first set was their performance of “Starálfur” a big fan favorite off of 1999’s Ágætis byrjun that literally plays during the scene taking place on the poster of Director Wes Anderson’s 2004 cult classic, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Although Symphony Hall beats the Wang Center out on acoustics, there is perhaps no performance space in New England more elegant and opulent than the Wang and the majesty of the room lent well towards the aim of transporting the audience to a different plain of mind.
Throughout the entire evening, phones were mostly kept in pockets and the audience demonstrated both maturity and respect for the performers that’s becoming less and less commonplace at music events. That this happened in Boston makes it all the more miraculous.
That Átta is the best Sigur Ros record in almost twenty years is reason enough for fans to be excited about their first album in a decade and the strength of their performance on this tour clearly demonstrates that this is a live act actively achieving critical mass. Readers ignore them at their own peril.
Photos by Andrew Bruss
