Sigur Rós: "We're all changing instruments and doing all kinds of weird things."

Icelandic post-rockers Sigur Rós hit the Royal Hospital Kilmainham next month for an eagerly anticipated gig. The group are currently preparing the live show, which promises to be a typically dazzling affair, with state-of-the-art sound and amazing visuals. In terms of the material they’ll play, the group are retooling some older songs and may also debut some new numbers.
“We’re working on a hundred different things at the same time,” says Sigur Rós’ bassist Georg, taking a break between rehearsals in Reykjavik. “We’re working on new music and trying to figure out new ways to play our old stuff as well. But we’re really happy with how it’s turning out.”
Will there be new songs debuted?
“Hopefully yes,” nods Georg. “We are working on new material and we’re hoping that we have it in shape for the beginning of the tour. I hope that the shows are going to be different. It’s a weird sort of space that we’re in, but a good one. There’s three of us playing, but it’s not as stripped back as you might imagine. We’re trying to figure out new ways to play songs that usually would have a lot strings and things like that. Also, our drummer has become a piano player. It’s fun – we’re all changing instruments and doing all kinds of weird things.”
In terms of the new material, it will certainly be interesting to see what direction Sigur Rós take. Their last record, 2013’s Kveikur, was noted for its darker direction, incorporating elements of dark ambient and industrial alongside the staple quotient of glacial post-rock. It was an intriguing creative step for the trio to take, given the criticisms that had been levelled at their output over the years.
Indeed, infamously, the band’s ethereal sound had been dismissed by Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite as “one step away from The Lord of the Rings.” Certainly, in this unlikely post-rock Blur v Oasis scenario, the Scottish crew came off as the hard-edged punks as against the near prog-rock tendencies of the Icelandic outfit.
As they continue the creation of their next record, Sigur Rós are weighing up whether to pursue Kveikur’s darker feel or if they’ll take a different tack. With the band looking to finesse the material during their live shows, the writing process harks back to the approach they took on their early albums.
“We have recorded some things,” says Georg. “But we’re writing at the same time – we’re recording as we go along.
We’re not even 100 percent sure how we’ll play the new songs, there’s a lot of layering of things. It’s sounding quite unique and very different to what we’ve done before. You could almost call that another headache; we’re thinking, how do we do this live?”
“It’s undecided really, in terms of how many new songs will be in the set. We have a lot of ideas – we have two or three songs that are pretty much ready. Before we record them, we want to tour them as we did with the brackets album. We wrote those songs on the road, and sometimes we’d actually write stuff during the soundcheck. So we want to go back to that. It was interesting at that time to see how the music evolved from day one until the time we recorded it.”
There have been reports that US producer John Congleton was involved with the recording.
Yeah, he was and possibly is,” says Georg. “We did a few sessions with him to see what would happen and some really good ideas came out of that. We’re not sure if we’ll finish the album with him or with someone else. Everything is kind of open-ended.”
Since the early ‘90s and the advent of Bjork and The Sugarcubes (whose label Sigur Rós were briefly signed to), Iceland has been home to an incredible array of acts. Much like Ireland, it punches well above its weight when it comes to music and the arts. But for those of us who’ve visited Reykjavik, there is a noticeably collegial atmosphere among the bands. When I was over to interview Of Monsters And Men last year for example, you were likely to run into musicians and artists wherever you went in the city, such was its vibrant creative atmosphere and compact nature.
“Yeah, it is a little bit like that, everyone knows each other,” affirms Georg. “It’s always been like that actually, even from when we started – you’d always know all the bands. Then
again, everyone is in a band! There are a lot of people in Iceland who play in a lot of groups. There’s people who have about 10 different projects – when you get to the the Airwaves festival
or wherever, there’ll be people playing all over the place. I think there was one guy who did 40 different shows over the weekend!”
Despite its cool climate, Reykjavik became a cultural hotspot in the mid-’90s and enjoyed a notable jump in its hip quotient when Blur decamped there to record their self-titled fifth album. The pub Kaffibarinn became a hub for musicians in the city, and so besotted did Damon Albarn become with the bar that he eventually became a co-owner. Blur were regularly seen around town during the period, where they liked to cut loose with the local “Black Death” liquour, Brennivin (the Icelandic equivalent of Poitin).
These days, Kaffibarinn remains one of the must-visit locations for culture vultures heading to Reykjavik. Do Sigur Rós themselves still pay an occasional visit?
“I’m too old for that now,” laughs Georg. “I used to go there a lot, but I haven’t been in a while. There are so many places to choose from now as well. With regard to Damon, we’ve met
him quite a few times and we’re friendly.”
I recall seeing an interview once with Sigur Rós in which they said they’d taken on Blur in a game of football, which as matches involving musicians go, is definitely Premier League stuff.
“I don’t remember that actually,” replies Georg. “It was probably after a session in Kaffibarinn!”
Speaking of soccer, there is considerable excitement in Iceland about their national team’s appearance in the forthcoming Euros, their first time to make it to a major championship. For a long time in the qualification campaign, Irish supporters looked on enviously at Iceland’s progress, as they topped their group ahead of the mighty Dutch, who’d finished third at the last World Cup. However, Shane Long’s immortal goal against Germany and the subsequent play-off victory over Bosnia assured we’d be joining the Icelanders in France.
For his part, Georg is hugely enthusiastic about the upcoming campaign.
“I am super-excited,” he says. “For Iceland, it’s almost like we’ve already won. We’ve made it to the finals of a major tournament for the first time ever – we’re the smallest country in the history of the world to make it to such a big tournament. The team is amazing, I went to every single home game. It’s unbelievable.”
Sigur Rós have been keeping busy with extracurricular activities over the past couple of years, and made a notable appearance on Game Of Thrones, where they were the band soundtracking the notorious Red Wedding scene, which ended in carnage and any number of shocking deaths.
“I’m not 100 percent sure how it came about,” says Georg of the band’s appearance. “I guess Dave and Dan, the writers, are big fans and they just threw it out there, like, ‘Would you be willing to do this?’ We’re all huge fans of the show, so we went, ‘Of course, it would be fantastic.’ It was funny, just a month before that we’d got the request to do The Simpsons – we were asked to score an episode, and that was amazing. We were talking about it and we said, ‘The only thing missing now is to be on Game Of Thrones, then we could just retire.’ Two days later we got a phone call asking us to do it! But it was great fun and a real laugh.
“Of course, we were the band playing for the King at the Purple Wedding. We were onstage and they were throwing pints at us and stuff. We did the same song The National did, ‘The Rains of Castamere’. It’s the Lannister song – I think the bands always do that one particular tune.
It was a typical film set really, there was a lot hanging around, but we shot it in Croatia and the weather was absolutely beautiful. The whole cast were super-nice people and it was great fun hanging out with them.”
As Georg mentioned, around the same time Sigur Rós also made a cameo on The Simpsons, and followed in the footsteps of Sonic Youth by recording their own version of the iconic theme tune.
“With The Simpsons, we got the request when we were actually on the road,” explains Georg. “Because we were touring, we thought, ‘How are we going to get to a studio and do this? We don’t have any time.’ But we really wanted to do it, so we found the time. We just did it backstage in a green room with computers, and some of it we did in a hotel as well. If I remember correctly, we started it in America and finished it in Europe. They drew us well. We didn’t say anything, I think we just grunted (laughs).”
Given its cinematic nature, it’s unsurprising that Sigur Rós’s music has been used on numerous soundtracks. Does Georg have a particularly favourite use of the group’s music in film and TV.
“I loved how Wes Anderson used our music in The Life Aquatic,” he says. “It fit perfectly. Also, I thought the way Danny Boyle used it in 127 Hours was absolutely amazing. He edited the song and made it longer for that scene, which is quite unusual, but he did it so well. We actually think the song is better longer! Maybe we’ll play that version when we go on the road.”
Sigur Rós are pretty much alt.rock royalty, so it’s no surprising that when they tour the US their after-parties are quite star-studded.
“Yeah, it’s sometimes quite surreal,” nods Georg. “Probably the most unlikely person was Ron Jeremy, the porn star. Other than that, the Coldplay guys are friends. We haven’t seen them so much lately, although I did bump into them in Australia the other day. I did meet Gwyneth a couple of times as well, she’s really nice actually.”
Other A-list fans of Sigur Rós are Radiohead, with whom they once worked on a piece of music for the Merce Cunningham dance company.
“It wasn’t so much a collaboration,” recalls Georg. “We both did our own kind of thing. It had to be like that, we weren’t allowed to collaborate. The whole idea was that it was a random thing. It was called Splitside. Even with the other aspects – there would be two different sets, and also different choreography and costumes and so on. Then they’d flip a coin to see which elements would go together and who’d go first, etc. We did it live with them a couple of times. Radiohead also invited us to support them on the Big Top tour, which was a big breakthrough for us. We owe them a lot.”
Turning that eagerly awaited new album, how is the new material sounding? Will it continue to explore the darker sounds of Kveikur?
“It’s a good question,” muses Georg. “At the moment, it’s going even deeper into that darker terrain. We’re very much enjoying using a lot of electronic stuff. We always have I guess, but it is sounding even more electronic than usual. It’s sounding quite unique, like something I’ve never heard before, which is scary and interesting at the same time.”
Like many Scandinavian musicians, Georg has a wry, sardonic sense of humour that chimes well with the Irish temperament. It’s unsurprising, then, that Sigur Rós always enjoy their visits to these shores.
“Absolutely,” says Georg. “We always say it feels like coming home. And I mean it honestly when I say that it’s definitely one of our favourite countries to play. Every time we realise we’re coming to Ireland, we get excited.”