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Hey guys - I don't post much but I lurk... I used to be a very big music fan. Back from like... 2001-2006 or so, I was a HUGE fan of Sigur Ros, for instance - I collected their live recordings, had seen them live in 2001 and 2003, and it was like... they felt SO FAR evolved ahead of what everyone else was doing at the time, and it was still pretty underground, I mean - they were still barely filling out ~1,000-2,000-seat venues in North America, but it made the shows that much more intimate and intense. I felt a little sad when they found semi-mainstream success, even though I was very glad for them and they certainly deserved it! It's hard not to feel nostalgic for that time when you liked a band before their popularity really blew up, you know? After Kjartan Sveinsson left, especially, it felt like something was really missing in both their live shows and the recorded music they put out after that. A band like Sigur Ros... I don't know, it always felt like a delicate balance/chemistry between the four members. Kjartan was the one who was musically trained - he did all the string arrangements, including Staralfur with its palindromic arrangement. He was also was the main keyboard/synth player and multi-instrumentalist. After Kjartan left, they were basically stripped down to a standard Guitar/Bass/Drums three-piece, and it was just like... watching the band go from being really special and multi-faceted to something... less; they kinda lost their sound, IMO. And now I guess the drummer, Orri, has also left after sexual assault allegations, which is really frustrating and sad as well, which leaves just Jonsi and Georg, the bassist. I somehow don't think Sigur Ros is gonna be performing or releasing new music anytime soon. it's so sad... However! The COOL thing is that Jonsi and his partner Alex have resurrected Riceboy Sleeps for its 10th anniversary, and just announced a brief 10-date North American tour where they're going to perform the album in full - with a full orchestra and choir - live, and in small/intimate venues. This is quite a surprise, and SUPER thrilling and excited, because the performance they did of part of the album earlier this year at the Sydney Opera House was really stunningly amazing; Here, I'm just gonna link to it, it's about 22 minutes of bliss, and at the end of the song 'Indian Summer' Jonsi had my jaw dropped wide open with how amazing his vocal abilities still are... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtSom6YxSGI When I saw this a few months ago, I remember thinking, "poo poo, I'd have given ANYTHING to catch that performance, that's the best 'Sigur Ros' performance (even though it's actually just Jonsi and his partner) that I've seen in over a decade!" And what happened yesterday? They announced the tour. And it just so happens I am visiting Los Angeles next month for 3 weeks, and it just so happens that they're playing at The Orpheum (the old theater from Last Action Hero :0) there *while I am in LA*! So yeah, I snapped up some tickets. Felt lucky to get them! If you to their official site you can find the dates and links for tickets. I haven't seeb Sigur Ros in *ages*, but I am so excited to see this show... Even though it's not technically Sigur Ros. But I was always a Jonsi fan first and foremost anyway 
kaworu fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Sep 25, 2019 |
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Sep 25, 2019 14:06
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2024 20:40 |
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I've been on a BIG Arcade Fire kick this last week - first time I've really gotten into listening them since, uh.... Well, probably 7 or 8 years? I remember feeling relatively disappointed by Reflektor when it came out, but I think my expectations were unreasonably high given their track record plus the James Murphy involvement, I like the album a lot more now - and I really quite liked Everything Now (which I listened to for the first time recently) even with all very obvious ABBA/euro-disc influences worn on its sleeve. Mostly I've just been watching/listening to live sets - AF is one of those bands where almost all of their songs just sound better with that amazing live energy. The best show I ever went to was an Arcade Fire show, too - I was lucky enough to see them perform in a little club in Boston with The Hidden Cameras (which was the band I actually went to see that night and they were fantastically amazing too, tough to say who was better. But I've never gone to see them since, because the idea of seeing them in some gigantic stadium does not really.... yeah. It's funny how my opinion of them has developed, though. 10 years ago I felt a bit embarrassed to have been such a big fan of theirs for so long, since they sorta epitomized trendy indie music for a while there. But now I honestly feel lucky to have gotten in on the "ground floor" with them. I still remember the very first time I listened to Funeral the week it came out (like a lot of people I read pitchfork every day back then and their review called it to my attention) and just being IMMEDIATELY blown away by how powerful and amazing songs like "Power Out" and "Rebellion" were. And they still sound amazing today.
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Sep 20, 2020 20:08
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You know it’s funny, I’m not at all plugged into the whole indie/pitchfork music scene anymore (although I used to be for most of the ‘00s) so I missed all the stuff about the accusations about Win Butler’s behavior when it came out earlier this summer until just a few days ago, when I randomly happened to read about it. I was listening to some of their live shows from the last few months that had been uploaded to YouTube and such before that, just in my car and such, and I had been sort of puzzled because their recent shows had sounded oddly anemic and soulless to me. Songs that sounded amazed on their last tour were falling utterly flat, and the whole band sounded just sort of half-hearted and going through the motions, which is not the way that Arcade Fire had *ever* sounded to me before in live shows - whatever their faults, they’d always seemed to throw themselves all-out into their performances. And I had wondered why they sounded like they were mailing it in, and I guess this at least explains some of it. The whole thing was definitely jarring to read about it, because like everyone else I had sort of bought into the generally clean-cut image that Win had carried forward. The fact that what he did was right on the line in terms of legality (but way over the line in terms of creepiness, sexpestiness, sleaziness, and being a godawful husband and father) sort of makes it all feel even more gross and degrading, in some way. Of course I didn’t actually make it all the way through the whole pitchfork article, just seems that way to me based on what I did read.
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Dec 5, 2022 13:26
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