::NEVER A TRUER FALSETTO::


The Sigur Rós concert in Las Vegas was a dream -- ghostly, soft, crinolined, and transient.

It opened with the band playing behind a translucent white curtain; spotlights aimed from onstage silhouetted the musicians as they began with the opening tracks from Takk..., their most recent album. I couldn't believe -- and still can't, really -- that the pure, eudaemonic voice came from a person. That person was Jónsi, the lead singer and guitar-player, whose skeletal frame betrayed a bleaker persona than his voice suggested. His eyes stayed shut for much of the show, and as the songs built, his fisted hands shook as he sang. The tension in his body made my mind twist. He was gaunt, and I thought of a Tim Burton character:


Exactly halfway through my favorite song, "Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása," which means "Good Weather For Airstrikes," they stopped playing. I was expecting this; I'd read on a few blogs that they pause during that song to see how long the audience will stay silent. Our audience utterly failed. They resumed play after about ten seconds, tops. I was ashamed to have failed the test.

I cried thrice. When Jónsi's ebullient voice rose above the swaddling music for the first time, I thought, "I am thirty feet from an angel."


Here's the track list, in order of album release (and not necessarily correct; since lyrics were in Hopelandic, I may have mixed up a few from ( ) or Takk...):

Takk...
Glósóli
Saeglópur
Hoppípolla
Untitled 1
Untitled 4
Untitled 7
Untitled 8
Svefn-g-englar
Ný Batterí
Viðrar Vel Til Loftárása

Check out my Flickr photoset.