paul mcallister
sigur rós are playing the main stage at 5.45 on the closing day of this wonderful
festival. we manage to get our way to the front in time for the start of their set.
they are quite honestly mesmerising. they were the band i was looking forward to seeing
most, and i wasn't disappointed. they were absolutely beautiful. totally stunning.
they leave us after just 5 songs, sadly, but we're all totally enchanted by their
atmospheric beauty. we bump into jonsi (literally, as he almost knocks my friend over)
on the dancefloor later that night, and he dances with us for a while. the rest of
the band are sat against the wall, but jonsi is really going for it, with some crazy
dancing :)
here is what they had to say about sigur rós in the all tomorrows parties official programme. this may or may not have been written by stuart braithwaite (mogwai)
"with their third album spending some months at number one in their native
iceland, it's perhaps no surprise that these ambitious, classically minded guitar
abusers have attracted sponsorship from health food stores, and the icelandic equivalent
of the national grid. with frontman jonsi birgisson singing in the entirely invented
language of 'hopelandic', accusations of nouvaeu-prog indulgence (jonsi playing his
guitar with violin bow etc) are scuppered by the overwhelming beauty of it all"
(paul mcallister)
