Bonnaroo: Five Reasons You Need To See Sigur Rós This Year

4:45 PM EDT on June 15, 2008

They (i.e. Barbara Streisand) say people who need people are the luckiest people. But you know who really are the luckiest people? People who have a ticket to see Sigur Rós this summer. It's not that I haven't seen 'em before, but it's been 24 hours and I'm still paralyzed from the 1AM bliss fest of their set Saturday night in That Tent. Here's why you should sell all your possessions to secure a ticket to see them right now:

The current setlist is a catalog-spanning beast, showcasing hallmark moments from each of the band's style shifts, from the dark and dank Ágætis byrjun, to the slowest-of-core unpronounceabilites of the ( ) stuff, to the triumphant Takkisms. (Saturday brought "Svefn-g-englar" [the "it's you-oooo" song], "Njósnavélin" [the "yu-silo" song], "Olsen Olsen," "Hoppípolla," "Glósóli," and non-album crowd fave "Hafsól" [the drumstick-on-the-bass song]).
The Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust stuff crushes it live, comes with lots of horns, ups the band's overall joy quotient, and really seems to have loosened them up, as people, even more. Last night these included "Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur," "Godan Daginn," "Vid Spilum Endalaust," "Festival," "All Alright" (the one in English!) and of course "Gobbledigook."
Umm, "Gobbledigook." Which winds up having 12 people on stage (fully clothed, sorry), a drumline powered by amiina, confetti guns, and, most notably, a wildly grinning Jonsi.
The mariachi band that parades the stage during "Sé Lest" has a pretty great outfit.
They are the best band in the world.

They played one encore and took two bows. The "one more song" chants weren't satisfied, so the crowd did the logical thing and hung around to applaud the sound men. (Try it at home, it's the new "encore!") At one point I started texting "Sigur Rós is..." and a guy next to me asked, "may I be so rude as to suggest the rest of your sentence?" I found this a fair request. He offered: "Sigur Rós is ... an atmospheric pumpkin. And this year Halloween is Christmas." I mean, I've never read a Sigur Rós review that sounds any less goofy than that, so let's go with it. But don't take atmospheric pumpkin guy's words: AT&T Blue Room streamed the set, and YouTube's done the rest. So up first, so many videos:

"Sé Lest"
[videoembed size="full_width" alignment="center"][/videoembed]
[Mariachi band at ~4:20]