An Evening With Sigur Rós @ The Paramount Theatre (9/20/2016)

As an "an evening with" show, there was no opener. Galen, Erin, and I arrived a couple of minutes after the 8:30 beginning. The show came in two parts, each lasting about an hour, with a 20 minute intermission.

The first part was slower, softer, and had more songs that I didn't recognize/recall - I didn't do much "prep" for the show besides listen to my two favorite albums of theirs (Takk... and Kveikur). The second part was more dynamic - which is my preference for their stuff - and had a couple of my jams, including Sæglópur. Somewhat unfortunately, though, I would estimate that they only played 3 or 4 of my top 10 favorite songs by them. The setlist also seemed to span the entirety of their catalog.


As was expected based on the Twitter chatter, their stage set-up was pretty amazing. They had lights or light strips on just about everything. They also had two big screens displaying stuff - one really big one all the way in the back, and another not-as-big partially see-through one that moved up/down and could serve as either a backdrop or a facade. Of course, the screens don't really add much unless they are displaying something cool or interesting, and they had plenty of that. For at least half of the songs I really wanted to take a picture to capture the feel of the chosen light/graphics scheme, but I didn't want to be "that guy" who was only snapping pics and not enjoying the show.


A random observation: there was no on-stage banter at all - they just performed the song. I'm not sure if it's for artistic reasons or because they're not native English speakers (though I know that Jónsi speaks at least decent English). They did do a double bow for the standing ovation at the end, though.

Rating: 4.5/5