So I went to the Sigur Ros show at Calvin last night. Some of you were probably there (we went to the early show). It was very good. My favorite parts were the very beginning and very end. They had a big sheer veil hanging in front of the stage. Colored lights projected silhouettes of the players and equipment on the screen from behind while pulsing, abstract video was projected on it from the front. Different lights would pulse, letting you see through the screen to the people, then back to the silhouettes. It was visually stunning. Effects like these make for a good show, and that's one reason to go to a concert, but I think that what they were doing went beyond eye candy that couldn't fit in the liner notes. By flattening their on-stage image onto a screen they drew attention to the fact that concerts aren't just about music, they’re about spectacle. The people on stage are not just producing the sound, they are also an image. The screen and the video pulled in an appropriate reference to another medium that deals with time, sound, and spectacle: film. There was something really nice about how all the elements seemed really pure. The video was little more than television snow; the words, if they were even real, are in a language almost no one speaks; and the sound, especially the electric guitar played with a violin bow, seemed to be pure energy flowing through the instrument, unmediated by melody. I actually would have liked it if they left the veil in place for the entire show. Not being able to see the performers very well didn't bother me. Sigur Ros seems to have a different sort of rock band identity. The music they make is at once incredibly objective, like a purely modernist exploration of the pure forms of sound and light, and incredibly introspective and personal. They don't relate a personal experience to you, like other bands, instead they provide a conduit through which you have the experience for yourself. It's there that they shift from being artists to artisans, like the way that the individual that painted a medieval icon is unimportant, it's the way you experience it that counts. I'm not trying to degrade them for being artisans instead of artists, in fact I applaud them. We could use more artisans.
This isn't a photo from the show, it's from www.sigur-ros.info, but this is how it looked.