igur Ros is an Icelandic band that has been creating music that defies all genre classification for the last 25 years. Although many call Sigur Ros a post-rock band, this generic title doesn't come close to capturing their combination of ambient piano melodies, operatic falsetto vocals and primordial roars from an electric guitar played with a cello bow. In many ways Sigur Ros' music resembles modernist painting of the early 20th century as it breaks the mold of previously accepted forms of music making and suggests new abstract structures in which we can understand the craft.
Sigur Ros brought their 2024 Orchestral Tour featuring the Wordless Orchestra to Chicago's Auditorium Theatre in September 2024. The band usually consists of Jónsi Birgisson, Georg Hólm, and Kjartan Sveinsson but in this special arrangement, they were joined by a 41-piece orchestra. They played two sets that featured tracks from ÁTTA, their eighth studio album released in 2023, and fan favorites that have been treasured for decades. Their performance took Chicago fans on a epic journey that seemed to go beyond normal music listening and into the realm of transcendent meditation.
The most striking element of the Sigur Ros sound is Jonsi's incredible vocal control that reaches the highest peaks of falsetto and beyond. During the crescendoes of many tracks, Jonsi captures a frequency of sound so high that it mimics the perfect pitch of a tuning fork or a piano key. The vocals are nearly ultrasonic and it's hard to believe that the sounds are coming from a human. These are the sounds of Sirens from Greek mythology and to see it in-person is nothing short of breathtaking. It may be common to hear angelic sounds like this at the opera but instead of relying on narrative, many Sigur Ros songs use words that don't have any semantic meaning at all. The band calls their words with no meaning "Volenksa" and this interesting method of lyric creation requires no element of comprehension from the listener. Instead, the listener is solely focused on the act of hearing sounds coming from a human voice and instruments.
Pre-modernist paintings used images to depict a landscape or still-life but modernist painting made the act of painting itself the subject matter. This is what Sigur Ros does to music. Just as Picasso rejected the need to imitate three-dimensional space in his paintings, Sigur Ros rejects the idea that music has to be understood in a specific way to create an emotional reaction. Although most Sigur Ros songs are sung in Icelandic, there are countless fans who love their music without understanding the language. Sigur Ros music almost seems to be a sonic Rorschach Test that allows the emotions of the listener to spill out of their psyche and merge with the sounds. The emotionally evocative nature of their sound has an obvious cinematic quality, which makes it no surprise that their music has been included in several films and TV shows. Sigur Ros songs have been featured in movies like Vanilla Sky, 127 Hours, Aquaman, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and more. They've also appeared in TV shows like Planet Earth, Game of Thrones, The Simpsons, Black Mirror, Dexter and more.
Jonsi's vocals are one aspect of the Sigur Ros sound but another major component is their uniquely modernist approach to instrumentation and composition. Jonsi plays his guitar with a cello bow which creates sounds that can be reminiscent to the high pitch abstractions of Pink Floyd's Pompeian version of 'Echoes' or sounds so low that they resemble the songs of whales. These abstract stylings are paired with ultra-emotional, melodic compositions from Kjartan Sveinsson and the use of rumbling bass or comforting glockenspiel from Georg Hólm. Every Sigur Ros track seems to be a new world to explore and marvel at, but the accompaniment by the New York- based Wordless Orchestra led by Robert Ames took these songs to a new level.
The Chicago stop of the 2024 Orchestral Tour featured many instrumental interludes that supplemented Sveinsson's piano playing or Holm's powerful bass with layers of violins, cellos, horns and choir singing. As Jonsi's vocals reached their highest peaks, they seemed to melt into the orchestra that was replicating the same note. The layers of strings eventually subside leaving Sveinsson's poignant piano chords hanging in the air like clouds. This is the kind of music that brings the audience out of their normal way of thinking and envelops their attention within the immersive sound. There is nothing to do but bask in the wonder of their creation.
Sigur Ros' 2024 Orchestral Tour continues until the end of the year with shows in Philadelphia, Washington D.C., North Carolina, Miami, Austin, Nashville, Oslo, Stockholm and Iceland. Take a look at the Chicago setlist below and don't miss your chance to see this show.
