This Is Music

I've never been high before, but last night watching Sigur Rós at the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, I sort of wished I was on something.

For the unaware, Sigur Rós is an "Icelandic post-rock band with melodic, classical, and minimalist elements. The band is known for its ethereal sound and lead singer Jónsi Birgisson’s falsetto voice." (Many thanks to Wikipedia.)

My brothers and I managed to bribe our way into the show after scalping what turned out to be fake tickets. We were an hour late, but what we experienced was pretty much worth the steep price of admission.

When we were ushered into the venue, it didn't take long to realize that we were in for something completely different. We walked in mid-song to an audience captivated by a six-piece orchestra on center stage, dressed as angels and blowing their brass.

The group (with a nine-member entourage) played some songs that I knew and others that I didn't. But in the mere hour that I was there, there were enough "holy shit" moments where I knew I was experiencing the most powerful, beautiful music that I'd ever heard.

One of those moments came during the second song we saw, in which the band just completely stopped playing and froze for 30 of the longest pin-drop seconds I've felt in concert. Then the lead singer suddenly resuscitated and the song resumed.

Sigur Rós sound celestial on CD. But in concert, the sweeping, dramatic crescendos that they built bordered on an out-of-body experience. So much so that the riveting catharsis in the last song ("Popplagið") made for the most monumental, explosive grand finale I'd ever heard.

It was a night where music was in its most moving, glorious art form. A night where the music transcended hearing and listening to become pure feeling. The energy on your skin, the vibrations in your heart. The power; the beauty.