sigur ros is the loudest band ever

Before last night, I had never seen a band that was loud enough to make me grind my teeth together. Today I'm typing with a lopsided head because we were sitting slightly right of center at last night's Sigur Ros show.

Sigur Ros could be accused of being a bit heavy-handed, and there were moments of that last night. But the band did a good job of switching things up just when you might suspect things were about to get boring. Although it seems the band is working from a very limited lyrical pallet (He's singing in a made up language, and I think it has 12 words. One of which is "titsue"), there was enough variety in the show to keep the crowd interested. And the encore was the loudest and most fantastic thing ever. It would have been impossible to finish any stronger.

The opening band, Amina, could best be described using a story:

In the tiny village in the mountains lived a group of four sisters. They lived in a tiny house where they made music using anything that was lying about. One Christmas they each awoke to discover that Santa had left a single precious instrument beside their bed. Still in their pajamas, they began to play one by one, until each sister was awake and they were making a beautiful sort of racket.

Anyway, that's not the story of the band, but that's what it was like to watch them perform. They would share mischievous smiles between songs, almost like they had snuck away to America while Papa was asleep in a chair beside the fire. It was sort of precious and fantastic, and very fun to watch. I hope someday they'll tour on their own.

I'd give the show an overall rating of 9ish on a 10 scale.

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Additional Comments:

1) Sigur Ros' singer, Jonsi, is the skinniest man I have ever seen. After the show I told Gina that while I assumed he was a vegetarian, he almost looked like he only ate single-celled organisms.

2) Amina looked quite homely (but cute) in their home-made-looking dresses, but it was nice to see that they had changed to normal people clothes when performing with Sigur Ros. The thought of them walking around America in those dresses almost made me scared for them.

3) If you're that kid sitting in row two, PUT DOWN THE CAMERA. You don't need 10 shots from every song.