MUSIC

SIGUR ROS ★★★½

Margaret Court Arena, July 27

Reviewed by Michael Dwyer



Here it comes, out of the calm: the shimmer and build, the keening and hammering, the tempest and the supernova. Immense computer projections escalate into molten eruptions and galactic implosions. Jonsi bends from the waist, sawing his electric guitar with a cellist's bow as decibels hit the red.

Jonsi Birgisson of Sigur Ros sawing up a storm. Credit:Mark Metcalfe

This, of course, is how Sigur Ros rolls. But the mood has turned darker; more violent for the Icelandic storm-bringers. The remaining trio — bassist Georg Holm and drummer Orri Dyrason flank singer Jonsi Birgisson in the audio-visual maelstrom — seems determined to atone with force for the loss of keyboard player Kjartan Sveinsson.

The stage is dark, too, for much of act one. As neon lights creep up and along a forest of encircling poles, it begins in the gravel-crunching, metal-shearing present, then circles back to their ecstatic/ dramatic 1999 origins. It finishes with a couple of new pieces, ironically among the sweetest in Thursday's epic panorama.