San Francisco Bay Guardian | Arts and Entertainment

The life Icelandic

ON WAKING, vision still glazed with sleep, all things seem soft and abstract – every bright spot is a nimbus with spinning thorns of light. This shapes-in-fog beauty is embodied in Sigur Ros's live show. At their most recent appearance in SF, at the Warfield, the band meditatively closed their eyes while behind them, flickering in black and white, a film of children unreeled in slow motion and the music exploded and ebbed. Few other groups capture that sense of ecstasy and rapture so majestically, which explains why Wes Anderson chose their music for the cathartic climax of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, when the mythical jaguar shark was revealed.

Comfortably out of underground status with the major-label release of their third album, ( ) (MCA, 2002) – though still recording in a somewhat subterranean manner in a converted pool – Sigur Ros have made another otherworldly, immense album with their new follow-up, Takk, recording at home in an avant-ambient style they've been developing since their second full-length, Ágætis Byrjun (Bad Taste/Fat Cat, 1999). The band's fundamental aspects – the ambient music, alien-sounding vocals, and theatrical climaxes – haven't seen many stark changes: The sonorous buildups continue to carry the listener to cataclysmic crescendos as uniquely and ecstatically as their previous albums did, drawing the world's attention.

I caught their keyboardist, Kjartan Sveinsson, on the phone from Chicago, where he spoke in a quiet, small voice and light accent about playing in churches, film collaborations, and language called Hopelandic.

Bay Guardian: When did the decision to make the new album in Icelandic, not Hopelandic, come?

Kjartan Sveinsson: I don't remember exactly when – we just wanted to have lyrics this time. There is only so much you can do with Hopelandic. It's kinda limited. It's a fun thing, lyrics – we did them before, on our second album.

BG: So you can return to Hopelandic again?

KS: It's not a language. It's just gibberish.

BG: What things, outside of music, interest you?

KS: Architecture and everything to do with creating is very interesting, but music kind of takes everything up now. We're always working. We don't have much time for our hobbies. We have all different interests, of course, like traveling. Nature, for example, is really nice and important to me, but it is very rarely that I can get to see it. It's like touring – I've crossed the Rocky Mountains, like, six times, but I've always been asleep, of course.

BG: What are some things you find missing in the world?

KS: I think the world needs tolerance, first and foremost. I think people need to be tolerant and understanding in the world because it's so big and crazy. We are going to have to stand back and think and maybe give it a better chance.

BG: Are you gearing the European side of the tour toward playing cathedrals and churches?

KS: No, not really. We just play the normal venues. We do like massive places, not too much rock 'n' roll maybe, but variation is also very good. We have played a few churches, if they work, but it's hard for us to play in a church. It's very boomy, and most of the time they don't have proper electricity to run the whole show. So yeah, we have our longings, but it's hard to make it happen over time.

BG: I heard you're playing sports arenas in Iceland.

KS: Yeah [laughs], that's the only place where we can play in Iceland. It's the only place big enough.

Sigur Ros play Sat/1, 8 p.m., Paramount Theatre, Oakl. $35-$40. (415) 421-TIXS.

Other forthcoming post-rock shows