I headed over to the Heineken Music Hall for an evening of fragile Icelandic beauty in the company of the now legendary Sigur Rós.
The HMH is a mixed bag as a venue. The sound is good and the cloakroom is free, but I can definitely live without the bad fast food and poor saps walking around with beer barrels on their back, looking for punters in need of a top-up. The Amsterdam Arena’s parking tariff is also outrageous.
The concert had been sold out for some time and the venue was packed to capacity. Somehow, I’d managed not to see Sigur Rós before now, so I’d built up quite some anticipation over the years.
Vast screens overhead to the left and right of me (mis)informed me that Sigur Rós had first come to the Netherlands to promote their debut album, Takk. Of course, Takk was actually their fourth album. Someone had their information badly wrong.
Before I could immerse myself in swathes of delicate piano and walls of reverb, I’d first have to stand through the support band, For A Minor Reflection. The overhead screens informed me that they were a four-piece of nineteen year olds from Reykjavík.
At around 20:00, four impossibly juvenile-looking Icelandic waifs took to the stage and proceeded to produce a sound whose proportions was at complete odds with their stage presence. Each song began delicately, but grew over the course of the following ten minutes into a reverberating crescendo of epic proportions.
I call them songs, but there was no singing. Each piece was purely instrumental, twisting and swerving in unexpected directions, refusing to be confined to a single theme. I hate to pigeonhole bands, but think of them as Pink Floyd meets Sigur Rós.
I was blown away, to be honest. It’s been many years since I’ve been so impressed by a support band. After just the first number, I found myself already vowing to purchase their CD from the merchandise stand at the end of the gig.
Given the length of the songs, For A Minor Reflection played only four or five songs before their time was up. Like a good restaurant, they left me wanting more as they made their exit.
An hour after For A Minor Reflection had taken to the stage, it was the turn of Sigur Rós.
It was a gentle start, thanks to Svefn-G-Englar. One could immediately tell that it was going to be a good evening.
After that, time passed quickly. High points for me were Ágætis Byrjun, Glósóli, Hoppípolla, Sæglópur and Popplagið, with this last song being possibly their finest moment.
A large part of Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust was also played, of course, but this newest album has yet to really grow on me. It still feels devoid of any classic tracks, unlike previous albums.
Visually, they’re not the most exciting band in the world to watch. If it weren’t for Jón Þór “Jónsi” Birgisson’s signature cello-bow thrashing of his guitar, one could have closed one’s eyes and simply escaped the coils of the mundane world in the rising swell of sound crashing in off the stage.
All too soon, it was over, although my 41 year old legs were feeling the strain after three and a half hours of being glued to the same spot.
I beat a hasty retreat to the cloakroom and, from there, to the merchandise stand to pick up an autographed copy of For A Minor Reflection’s debut CD, the snappily titled Reistu Þig Við, Sólin Er Komin Á Loft… It’s been playing on the Sonos at regular intervals throughout the day.
I wish I were going to the London and Reykjavík concerts that will be rounding off the tour in the next few days. In particular, seeing the band play to a home crowd in the Icelandic capital would be an experience to remember.
For now, though, I’ll have to make do with the memory, a downloaded torrent of the gig, and my deluxe copy of Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust that arrived in the post last week. I still haven’t watched the DVD yet.