I’m writing on a windy, drizzly, overcast Goulburn day. I’ve had to triple-peg the washing on the clothesline otherwise it will end up down the street. On the Tuesday just gone it was so windy – with gusts of 80km/hour we were the windiest place in the state – that one of my standard rose-bushes was decapitated; I’ve bandaged it up with masking tape and, miraculously, it seems to be recovering. The chooks aren’t coping as well: Mrs Honky became poorly during the wind-storm and proceeded to go downhill until I woke up yesterday morning to find her still body on the floor of the run, the score marks of her legs in the dirt as if she thought she could outrun this. But I noticed that she was making small, long, slow breaths, so I got down to a crouch. She opened her eyes and looked at me, or at least in my general direction. A few minutes later I returned to the run with gardening gloves and a large plastic bag. She didn’t open her eyes, and her body was no longer breathing.
So here I am today, with the wind and the drizzle and the overcast sky. And Inni by Sigur Ros playing on the television. If there’s been one constant in my life since 2000 it has been Sigur Ros, the band that plays music which sounds like the earth is simultaneously falling apart and coming together, all because they’re from Iceland. I’ve been with the band since their miraculous Ágætis byrjun album. At first, I wasn’t taken by the enigmatically titled ( ) record, until I realised that I’d played it non-stop for eighteen months. He Who Likes To Sing Along To Some Songs and I were lucky enough to see the band play at the Enmore Theatre in Sydney just before the Takk album was released in 2006, so that record will always remind me of how we downed a bucket-load of vodka and soda before the band took to the stage, and when they did how overwhelming it was – there were tears, that’s what I can tell you.
In 2007 Sigur Ros put out Hvarf/Heim, which is a cross between a b-side collection and live footage of the band playing intimate shows across their homeland. And then came Med sud i eyrum vid endalaust (meaning ‘with a buzz in our ears we play endlessly’), the record with the young folk doing a nudie run across the road on the cover. For the first time Sigur Ros worked with a producer (U2, Nine Inch Nails, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey et al), and the production is more three dimensional, the songs more varied, even if Med sud contains ‘Ara batur’, which is so widescreen Hollywood that you expect some trout-mouthed actress to leap out of the speakers and try to whisk you off to the altar.
And then the band went kaput, at least a temporary-hiatus kind of kaput.
But now we have Inni, which is the essentially the soundtrack to a film of the band playing live in London in 2008. Where I’m from, for $39 you can get the DVD, two CDs, and the album across three vinyl records, which is quite a bargain. In Inni, Sigur Ros sound more aggressively electric, which is no doubt because they aren’t playing with Amiina, their regular four-piece string section. Lead singer Jonsi Birgisson is in extraordinary form, somehow sharing the secrets of his life even though we English-speaking types have no idea what he’s saying because he uses either Icelandic or his own made-up language, or an infuriatingly appealing combination of both. As usual the band around him is both tight and expressive, although loose-limbed drummer Orri Pall Dyrason can sometimes sound as if he’s barely able to hold it all together.
Jonsi, who in the footage looks like a cross between Jimmy Hendrix and Adam Ant, and his almost pitch-perfect falsetto and his way of playing the guitar – with a violin bow – is undoubtedly the focus of Inni. But just as important is the film-work by Vincent Morisset. It is grainy, it is gritty, it is menacing. Morisset takes us onto the stage, almost as though he wants to give us a first-person experience of the band. He does not say, look how popular and talented Sigur Ros are; instead he takes us inside the band and beyond. I mentioned the word menacing, and it’s an appropriate word for Inni. Sure Sigur Ros can be pretty and beautiful, and yes sometimes they have their Enya moments, but there’s darkness at their core, a terrible darkness; anyone who’s noticed the David Lynch-esque motifs in Heim will know what I mean. Morisset reveals the band’s gravitas by focussing on the musicians and their music; how revealing are these four men, how unafraid they are of being emotional.
There’s very little sweetness and light to Inni, which is a good thing. Especially for days like this one, with the gale-force wind howling around the house, the grim sky, a dead bird in the garbage bin, and a rose-bush stuck together with masking tape. Because if Sigur Ros says anything it’s this: work fucking hard to live the deepest life possible, because there’s nothing else.
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November 27, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Nov
TF
Awful, terrible news about Mrs Honky. Tears at a concert is hard to beat. “Trout-mouthed”. Loved it, Nigel.
November 27, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Nov
Nigel Featherstone
My God, Tristan, your reply is dangerously close to a haiku!
November 28, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Nov
Gabrielle Bryden
There’s something about these cold, dark countries that brings out the inner demons 😉 They all need to invest in some sunlamps. Sorry to hear about Mrs Honky.
November 29, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Nov
Nigel Featherstone
Gabe, I reckon Iceland has a stack of sunlamps on standby!
As to cold, dark countries – I totally love them. All this blue sky and heat: it’s not for me. Actually, I’m kind of misrepresenting myself: the older I get the more I appreciate the hope of summer. But give me winter any day. Already I’m mourning the fact that I can’t use my fire (though I did crank it up on the Friday night just gone!).
As to Mrs Honky: I’ve concluded that it was heat-stroke that got her. So I’ve now rigged up a shade-cloth arrangement over the chook-run, which means it looks like the remaining ladies are camping out in the desert.
PS Back to Sigur Ros – you’re right to mention ‘inner demons’. Despite the band’s beauty, they have demons a-plenty.
November 29, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Nov
Gabrielle Bryden
I see you are succumbing to Chook-Induced Anxiety http://gabriellebryden.wordpress.com/2009/07/05/chook-induced-nxiety/
ps. I have a friend who migrated from Finland to Australia and living in the dark for months of the year sounds horrible (I can understand why they drink so much vodka) 😉 and love their saunas so much. I can understand you not wanting to give up the lighted fires.
December 3, 2011 at 9:16+00:00Dec
Nigel Featherstone
Hi Gabe, there’s in no doubt that I suffer from Chook-Induced Anxiety. Though I’m sure that also suffer from Chook-Induced Ecstacy!
Re. Scandiniva – I’m fairly sure I’d cope if I ever end up living there. Though I’d miss our sun heaps.