Sigur Rós : the unsuspecting soundtrack of our lives.

As with any band that has generated so much hype and seemingly unfaltering reverence, I have always approached Sigur Rós with cynical trepidation. In the equivalent of loving a band until everyone else starts to love it too, I stood my firm ground as the Sigur Rós bandwagon came crusading (or more fittingly; gliding, meandering or floating on a silk sheet carried by elves) past and waited for a moment when I could try to begin to understand them away from the cloak of popular sensation.

That moment came recently when I was cooking dinner in my humble kitchen/lounge room/living room/study. I dropped a chicken thigh into the pan as my housemate dropped a Sigur Rós DVD into the player. The DVD was ‘Heima’, a visual documentation of the series of free concerts that Sigur Rós played in deserted fish factories, far-flung community halls, sylvan fields, darkened caves and deteriorating churches in a bid to offer their own representation of their homeland - a retaliation to a ‘journalistic cliché’ that constantly links their music to the land in which they were forged.

As we watched ‘Heima’ (Icelandic for "at home" or "homeland") in our own home, carrying on conversation and half heartedly contributing to the construction of a 1000 piece puzzle of a smiling Marlene Dietrich, the music infiltrated our speech and our movements until it seemed as if we were swimming in the same psychedelic syrup that was pouring from the screen. We became undoubtedly more languid as the music became more melodic and minimalist. In the rare moments that the xylophone player would increase his pace, we too found ourselves caught in the rising expectations and the subsequent denouements.

It could be suggested that by having ‘Heima’ playing in the background, we were, in essence, appointing it – or at least allowing it- to fill up the space that is the background music to our lives. A track on the soundtrack that is the accumulation of music we choose to play everyday, the music that as Frith so likes to reassert, becomes a key player in the construction of our continually evolving identity.

Yet Frith also mourns the self appointed fact that “the study of popular music has been limited by the assumption that the sounds must somehow ‘reflect’ or ‘represent’ the people [who consume it]” and it is this idea that brings to light the irony in suggesting that the act of listening to and viewing images of Sigur Rós, the epitome of the exotic and unconventional, in the familiar solace of our own inner city home has some significant role to play in the grand scheme of social and personal identification.

It seems significant that my housemate has chosen to watch a documentary of the band, rather than simply listen to the CD in order to understand them in a visual sense rather than a purely aural one. As with anyone who follows their favourite artists on screen or who watches Rage until 3am on a Sunday morning there is a sense that perhaps if we can see them strum their guitars, hit their xylophone and whisper their syrupy sweet (yet indecipherable) words into the microphone then we will be closer to the band, have a better understanding of the music. Yet ‘Heima’ avoids offering us the visual stimulations that we crave. Save for a few intense close ups, the band is primarily situated behind great white sheets, while a light behind them projecting dauntingly large shadows onto their curtain.

At one moment someone suggests that the events unfolding on stage; the sheets, the marching band, the still frames of the audience and the picturesque music venues, could be considered less a concert and more a piece of ‘installation art’. This comment seems to be a reflection of a wine sipping world where everything is art and art is everything, yet I can see the truth in her statement. One can wonder if these seeming cinematic techniques that detract from the band itself and place the audience’s focus on the landscape and iconography of Iceland serve a much more important purpose in representing the very themes that Sigur Rós is aiming to communicate with their music.

The question of the way Sigur Rós’ music relates to, and is influenced by, their environment has long been creatively capitalised on by music theorists, reviewers and bloggers alike. Music writers are given something to grab onto with ‘Heima’ which seems to reassure that the band are inextricably linked to their homeland, that the music and the landscape go hand in hand. However, this idea need not lead to the placing of SR into John Street’s all too clichéd basket of categorical discourses. Rather, ‘Heima’ helps us understand that their music is less a result of their locality but more a reflection of a landscape that seems impossible to justify with words. It becomes an alternative primer for Iceland, which is revealed as less stag destination-du-jour and more desolate and exotic place of mystical qualities where human activity seems to only disrupt.

The ghost towns, outsider art shrines, national parks, small community halls and the absolute middle-of-nowhere-ness of the highland wilderness make up the aesthetically stimulating landscape, yet throughout the DVD these can often play second fiddle to the iconic images and symbolic (or do we just assume?) objects that we are given privy to in lingering close-ups. Brightly coloured dolls, unusual instruments, small white houses against stunning green fields and religious paraphernalia regularly steal our attention and each seem comparable to a kitsch artwork hanging in the Louvre. These additions could be considered as nothing more but artistic accompaniments, yet when listening to a band where we can’t understand what they are saying, we are given little to grasp onto, and thus can be forced to construe meaning from the insignificant, or miss intention where it was offered. We can only assume that the Icelandic foursome are taking advantage of the ‘great marriage between the representational art of the screen and the generally non representational art if music’ in order to help us feel and understand.