Live Review: Sigur Ros - O2 Apollo, Manchester 07/11/2022
Icelandic indie royalty Sigur Ros return to Manchesters O2 Apollo for an iconic anniversery set that proves just how important, and just how vital, the four piece are to so many.
Trying to wax lyrical about Sigur Ros to your fair-weather music fan is a little like trying to explain the appeal of Dostoevsky to the average readers of The Sun. There’s reasoning behind it. But you sound like a pretentious wanker in doing so.
Should you have managed to convince a fair-weather music fan to accompany you to tonight’s show at Manchester’s Apollo however, then no explanation would be needed. Touring to celebrate 20 years of the band’s third album ( ), other shows have been running almost to the three hour mark, and with nothing in the way of a support band, it’s clear the UK are in for much the same.
Having been five years since the band last graced this stage, fans are out in force for their first of two nights in the city, and as we take our seats on the balcony, there’s an unmistakeable air of expectation rippling through the venue, cutting off the moment the house lights dim and the opening crackle of ‘Untitled #1 – Vaka’ bursts from the PA.
It’s a fitting start, given that it opens the record everyone is here to celebrate, and silence falls over the entire venue, the red lights on stage basking the band in a warm glow, mirrored by the contorting dots on the screen behind. A human head at times, nothing but red lights at others.
Indeed, these lights play a crucial role throughout the set. A spiral of globe-like lamps threading their way throughout the equipment and shifting colours as the tracks progress. A muted grey for ‘Untitled #2 – Fyrsta’ a chilly piano backboned by nothing but bass, until frontman Jonsi’s ethereal falsetto joints them.
It’s as this point that a light if flashed in the crowd below, and a girl is carried out by security. Though unlikely overcome with emotion, it wouldn’t be hard. One look around the crowd on the balcony suggests several slightly moistened pairs eyes, especially as the band launch into the third successive untiled track of the evening, ‘Samskeyti’, the whole staged bathed in a warm yellow light; the band grouped together around the recently re-joined Kjartan Sveinsson.
It’s a warm and optimistic opening half, and well it might be. Though not the entirety of ( ) is aired tonight, the set mirrors the record’s aesthetic perfectly, a rousing, upbeat and optimistic first half that gradually segues into something altogether darker, more cloying, more menacing.
Though there’s nothing in the way of crowd interaction tonight, it matters not. It would displace the magic, the aura that the band have around them. They’d lose the rich ambiguity that permeates their music and allows their fans to impart their own meanings onto the lyrics that are often untranslatable, sometimes completely meaningless.
As the first half of tonight’s set builds towards it’s conclusion, it’s clear that things are getting weightier, and more fraught, though wrapping up things up with an outing of ‘Smáskifa’ the heaviness winds down, leaving us with nothing more than the piano and the images of doves on a wire behind an empty stage.
An interval is nothing unusual on a live show, though tonight it provides the capacity audience with some emotional respite, enough for a quick drink, or a cigarette before the band return for the second half.
And those quick cigarettes are needed. The second half of tonight’s set takes no prisoners, bolder, darker and more encompassing than the bristling optimism of the first half, it takes a deeply darker turn. Moody and cathartic, but equally as cinematic as the previous half, it’s a haunting approach, bolstered further still as the band drop like marionettes each time a song is finished.
Indeed tracks like ‘Sæglópur’ and ‘Festival’ all make for a darker more menacing approach. It’s something that’s bolstered by the title track from 2013’s ‘, Kveikur’, an unexpected airing, but one that sees the air of menace pervading the venue come to a head; the band dropping motionless once the closing crackles have abated.
It’s the closing number, the final track from ( ) ‘Untiled #8 - Popplagið’ that really brings the evening to a close, an empathic, atmospheric and anthemic number, it shows just how impactful Sigur Ros are, the motionless crowd in the stalls beneath us prove just how impactful the band are. And as the band exit the stage, the applause they’re left with is deafening.
It’s an applause that lasts long after the band have left the stage and the house lights have gone up. And it’s a testament to just how much this band mean to the crowd. Barely a word was seemingly uttered throughout the venue; the biggest reaction coming when ‘Manchester’, the only English word of the evening, was uttered from the stage moments before the band leave the stage, ending a set that encompassed much more than just music, the lights, the sound the emotion, this is what live music should be, and this is why Sigur Ros mean so much to so many.
Words by Dave Beech
Photos by Conor Mason
