Music to do good
Tuesday, September 15, was a special night in which more than 2,000 adults listened and enjoyed like children the balsamic music of Sigur Ros at the Euskalduna Palace in Bilbao. The Icelandic group is on an international tour accompanied by a large-format local orchestra in each city to carry the album “Átta” (2023) along with other songs to another more symphonic plane. In Bilbao it was the turn of the Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonika (BOS) together with the Bilbao Choral Societywho gave a very special color to the songs of Sigur Ros. In Barcelona, a few days before, they were accompanied by Vallès Symphony Orchestra and the Cor Francesc Valls.
The more than forty people on stage started the concert with “Blóðberg”. The show from the first moment was for all attendees an invitation to slow down the pace at which the mid-September routine already takes us once the summer is over. The lighting, changing from one theme to another, played an essential role in the show: depending on the color, it transported us both to a metropolis in the middle of the night and to the depths of the sea. The darkness that dominated the tables led to focusing attention on the enveloping music, the light and the atmosphere generated. You could barely make out singer Jonsi, Georg on bass, Kjartan on piano/electronics and additional musician Ólafur Björn Ólafsson on synths/percussion. In fact, it was part of the artistic concept that the four were visually integrated as a single ensemble together with the symphony, directed by Lorenza Borrani, and the choir.
They continued with “Ekki múkk”, a long-developed song from 2012 where Jonsi once again demonstrated how well falsettos suit him. Sigur Ros They are capable of creating dreamy music suitable for all ears and potentially healing many nerves. Live with the BOS strings and winds, the sound expands to infinity, creating an unparalleled sense of collective peace.
It wasn’t until the fourth track, “8” that we didn’t hear any percussion. The Icelanders are capable of composing very emotional songs, in which the drama of Anhoni, the epic of the best soundtracks, post-rock guitars, the ambient of Brian Eno and the dream-pop sensitivity of Julee Cruise coexist naturally. At the concert, there was even a wall of sound explosion from the Slowdive school of shoegaze.
The show was divided into two parts, each lasting approximately one hour. In the second, the first two songs “Untitled #1 Vaka” and “Untitled #3 Samskeyti” grew sinuously like a mantra around a looping melody until reaching its peak before returning to calm. The final stretch of the concert gradually brought us out of the beautiful lethargy: the beautiful final choruses in “Ára bátur”, the more marked rhythm in “Hoppípolla” and the most experimental closing with “Avalon”.
A marvelous concert, as proven by the final waves and waves of applause. With five minutes of daily prescription of Sigur Ros It could very well put an end to the rebellion in the classrooms, alleviate the mental health problems of half the population and cure us of the tyranny of so many politicians determined to play Risk with other people’s lands.
