Jonsi, from Sigur Rós, did a thing on NPR a few months back, I'm just listening to it now. He recently released a solo album, and he sings in English, and it caught me really off-guard but I'm in love all over again. Also, I could listen to him talk forever, there's such a soft, sweet quality in the Icelandic accent. Lovelove. (Also - he putzes around listening to the oldest vinyl he can find. The 1905 recording of the last castrati singer that they played was not, in fact, new to me.)

AND.

At the end of the interview, they were going to play a song. And he said the artist's name (which I can't recall)... and then: "This is a song... I don't know how to say this. D-I-N---"
"Dinah."

A) It was at least a month after I discovered them that I learned how to pronounce Sigur Rós. B) I have spent countless quarter-hour bouts since trying to get comfortable pronouncing (and spelling!) song titles like Svefn-g-englar and Viðrar vel til Lofstarasa. C) We're not even going to go into how long it just took me to get the silly ð character typed.

And Jonsi couldn't figure out how to pronounce "Dinah".

<3

Labels: music, sigur ros, spazz

 
Oh, Sigur Rós, I forgot how easily you make me cry...

Flipping through a few songs on shuffle on the iPod, I landed on a live version of "Viðrar vel til loftárása" (which, hey! I still spelled right on the first try! but I don't know the codes for special characters on linux...), a concert I downloaded ages ago but had never listened to.

It starts out so light and sweet, there's a long silence before the piano gently comes in... a verse or two is played, a sweet purity in the song, and then the band goes silent. For a long, long time. The crowd stays silent, then applauds, then is silent...

And the band suddenly flies into the second portion of the song, the part where everything opens up and expands, the strings rush in like waves on the shore, and everything just soars up into the stars...

And then it closes with just a few strings, gently playing, as a lullaby.


...I sat there for a few minutes afterward, tears in my eyes, asking myself how people had found themselves able to applaud, to yell approval, when all I could do was sit here stunned and breathless, crying at the sheer ecstatic beauty of the song.


I haven't watched the video in a few years, and it's stunning, so heartbreaking and haunting... and I need to go watch it again now.

(And then I'll churn out today's 1,667 words. promise.)

Labels: art, music, sigur ros