Their tentative outreach programme for Instead, they opted to use a picture by the photographer Ryan McGinley of naked youths running across a road, which the band felt captured their spontaneous quality.
Even that caused problems in America, where bare buttocks — at least those not belonging to porn stars — seem to offend the sensibilities. And the CD would have stickers put over the asses! Why should they be embarrassed by naked bodies? There's nothing offensive about it.
Look at rap album covers and you see, say, 50 Cent, and he's posing with guns and stuff, flexing his muscles — what a role model! That should be censored, surely? It's crazy! But hopefully, times are changing. More queasily, the band's music was apparently playing when Gwyneth Paltrow produced her little Apple. It all seems a million miles away from their lives in Iceland, as Birgisson confirms. We never think about it, we never talk about it, and we don't make a big thing out of it — we don't play the media game, stuff like that.
We just like to be able to walk down the street and go to a coffee-house, things like that. Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a day free trial Sign up.
Did that affect your performance? GH: I don't know. I don't think so-- I can only answer for myself, but maybe I got into the same headspace as I do when I'm recording a song.
You want to do it really well-- obviously, you want to do it really well always, but sometimes you just can't, when you've got shows a year.
It was kind of like recording. I was concentrating really hard on getting it right. You can do it five or six times and use the best take, which you can't do live. GH: Sometimes, yes. It depends on the show, it depends on where we are. In Iceland, we get a bit nervous. And in New York, as well. Dublin is actually one of our favorite places to play. There are a few places where you get a bit nervous. We were just on a short break for two weeks, so this is our first show in two weeks, and we're in New York.
It's a bit nerve-wracking, I get a bit nervous about it, but I think it's good to get a bit nervous. It pumps up your adrenaline. Pitchfork: Were you traveling for those two weeks, or just spending time at home? Pitchfork: I imagine when you're touring all the time, traveling is the last thing you want to do when you get some time off. Pitchfork: As you mentioned before, the band has campaigned a bit for environmental preservation.
Has it been a challenge to uphold green ideals while touring? GH: Yeah. We probably don't do enough of that. You should-- what's the saying, preach what you teach? You know, if you're fighting for something, you should do what you're fighting for.
But sometimes you go, ugh, I just flew 17 hours from somewhere on an airplane, and this bus is driving me thousands of kilometers. I read, I think, that Jack Johnson has a bus that runs on bio-fuel? I think that's really cool. We should do something like that. I wish we did. GH: It is hard! It's very expensive, it's more expensive to do that than the other thing, which makes it more difficult. Which is kind of stupid when you think about it. The government should pay people to drive electric cars, but they don't.
Pitchfork: I want to talk a little bit about the new record, and the song "Gobbledigook", in particular. Is it a joke? GH: It was, a little bit, but only a little bit. I think there's a big misunderstanding about us, about the language and the lyrics. We actually do take great care in writing lyrics, we really try to do our best.
We don't want to just say anything. So it is in a language. I hate to even say it-- the Hopelandic stuff is mostly a media thing, it's only a few songs. Obviously, the brackets album was all in that language, which is gobbledigook. It doesn't mean anything. The title actually came…should I say anything? Am I revealing too much? I think you call it "clippity-clop" in English. It sounded, to our management, who are English-- well, you know, actually, it was Flood, our producer.
He started it. I think he wrote down "Gobbledigook" instead of "gobbledigob," which is our word for clippity-clop. That's where the title came from. So it's Flood's fault. Afterwards, we said, "Well, that's kind of cool. It's also weird. It's gobbledigook. Pitchfork: I thought it was funny. People think you are deeply unfunny. Pitchfork: The cover of the new album is funny, it's butts with black stickers placed over them. It was censored by a lot of retailers in America. What prompted that decision?
Was it deliberate? GH: Yeah, I think it was. In fact, we actually wrote the lyrics for five or six of the songs in English. But it didn't seem to work out, it didn't fit. We needed to do something about it. So we tried to translate some of them back into Icelandic, and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, and sometimes we wrote new lyrics.
The only song on the album which is in English ["All Alright"] is one Jonsi wrote, and he was very secretive about it.
He didn't really let me read them before he sang the song on the record. He was very quiet about it. I was always asking him, "What are we doing about that song, are we writing more lyrics?
For instance, Birgisson, who carries the disarming expression of a naughty child caught with his hand in the biscuit tin, will tell you that his favourite vocalists are Leonard Cohen and the jazz trumpeter Chet Baker. Holm will mention Cohen, too, explaining: 'I never considered him depressing or sad; I always thought of him as uplifting. But if you inquire as to whether he listened to classical music as well, he looks at you as if you've just asked whether it ever gets chilly in Reykjavik.
Eventually, he replies: 'Yeah, yeah. So good they make you vomit. Sigur Ros have the oddest effects on their fans, says Andrew Smith. Topics Sigur Ros The Observer. Sigur Ros let go some kind of introductory rumble for several minutes before they arrived, and the theater flashed its lights to warn patrons to take their seats.
Speaking of the theater, it sold out—something like tickets—well in advance, which seems amazing to me. They took the stage behind a white screen, flashing shadows and lights and building a mood. And for the first, I dunno, 15 minutes that'd be about a song and a half , I wasn't terribly impressed. It felt big but sort of empty, like it wasn't exactly connecting the way it should.
Then they played "Svefn-g-englar," which might be considered their hit if bands like Sigur Ros had hits, and it clicked from the floor to the ceiling. Dramatic paragraph break.
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