Sigur Rós: ‘We Were Shit Musicians Just Lucky to Have Found the Sound’

Photos by Naz Kawakami 

Sigur Rós is quite possibly the strangest, most unique, hypnotic, complex, storied, and consistently compelling musical creators of our time.

In their nearly 30 years as a band, they have created a style, a language (literally, it’s called ‘Hopelandic’), and a genre entirely their own, illuminating corridors of ambient sound mixed with heartfelt melody not tinkered or experimented with since Brian Eno was spending all that time in airports. Georg Holm, being the bassist and one of the founding members of Sigur Rós, is an integral part of that legacy.

For music and musicians so worthy of being picked over, what can be said in this introduction about Sigur—but more specifically, Georg—that hasn’t already been said? Because of his allegedly possessing the greatest mastery of the English language within the band, Georg is the most present member in the Western press. However, it could also be supposed that he is the most present in the press because he is very good at doing press.

For a band so notorious for their awkward interview moments, Georg is a bit of a delight, which made it easy to ask about Sigur Rós’ new record and being a shitty musician.

Where in the world are you?

I’m back home in Iceland for a while; we just finished up a tour.

After only ever seeing live videos of you from years ago, I finally got to see you guys play on this recent tour and was blown away. This may be a broad question, but how do you think your performance style has changed over the years?

I think back to when we were starting, our live show was not something very planned ahead. It was more like, ‘Eh yeah, let’s do that song and skip that other one.’ Now, it is a bit more set in stone. It is a live show, so it has to be some sort of a show, something bigger, which we enjoy. We enjoy engaging with all of the senses. We have a visual component which has been around for years in some capacity. It’s hard to go back on that, I think. We were going to pull back on those aspects a lot on this tour, but I think we failed at that. It is a bigger show than we originally planned for this tour.

Being as big as you are, do you think that you’ve established great expectations, and how do you cope with the pressure that comes along with that?

I do think that in the past, we did feel that there were expectations about what the show should be like. When people talked about seeing the show, they’d say how amazing it was and we felt we couldn’t let other people down now that we had set the bar at that certain spot. For this tour, we were thinking that it is okay to just come and play our music. We wanted to be a little bit more intimate, and I hope that we did manage to do that, though it is a little more of a show than we originally thought we would bring with us.

Yeah, it felt like a very close performance.

We have been trying to play closer, more intimate venues. A lot of theatres. Last tour was more of these arena-type of things, which are not very personal. This last tour we only went around North America, for the most part, so we are excited to bring this tour to the rest of the world.

Is that what’s up next for you?

Right now we are in Reykjavík, but the plan is to go to LA in a couple of weeks to put the final nail in the new record. It was meant to be ready and out, but—this is typical us—we weren’t happy with it, so we’ve decided to revisit it. We know we can make it a little bit better.

What do you look for in a record? How do you know that it’s completed?

I am the member of the band that is usually the first to say, ‘Yeah, it’s fine, it’s ready,’ whereas the rest of the band are a bit more perfectionist, wanting it to be a little bit better. If it was just me, I think everything we put out would be just okay. It is a feeling when something is ready. I can really appreciate that it wasn’t ready the last time I listened to it, the feeling wasn’t there. Something was missing, we just have to find it. You never know what that thing is, but it will appear to you when you find it.

How do you all stay healthy as collaborators when making creative decisions and disagreements?

We’ve had our ups and downs, arguments and disagreements. I think right now, we are all grown-ups and see life a little differently from when we were 20 years old, when we started touring and stuff. We’ve grown as people and understand that we all have different needs and ideas about what things should be, and we appreciate each other more than maybe we did back in the old days. Back then, we had such a strong vision of what things should be, whereas today, we have somewhat different visions, but we all appreciate each other’s perspectives. It makes things more dynamic than back in those days.

What were you all like back in the old days, even before the music? What is the history that brought out this music?

We were all brought up in different environments around Reykjavík.

I know you guys like metal. Were you in metal or punk bands growing up?

Our original drummer, Ágúst [Ævar Gunnarsson], and I went to kindergarten together, so we’ve been friends since then. The way things started musically for us was that he got a drum kit for Christmas, so I bought a guitar. That was basically our first band. Drums and guitar, a bit like the White Stripes, but we sounded terrible.

How old were you?

14 years old, probably? Ninth grade? He started banging the drums and I started playing guitar, but I didn’t know a single chord so I would strum every single string and it sounded like shit, but I enjoyed it. It evolved from there. There was another guy in our class who actually knew how to play guitar, so we invited him to join the band. We couldn’t have two guitars, so he handed me a bass and I was the bass player from then on. We were listening to Led Zeppelin and Nirvana, just having fun.

Was that the first iteration of Sigur Rós?

Yeah, in a lot of ways, yes. The first song we wrote sounds pretty similar to what you would hear from us today. After we discovered that we had a sound and decided to form an actual band, for a while we were trying to sound like bands like The Smashing Pumpkins: floaty, dreamy, harmonizing guitars and bass—you know, indie rock, but then we sort of found our own sound again.

Sigur is sort of its own genre of music, where do you think your genre came from?

I often think about it. I sometimes like to think that it came about because of our lack of skills, because we weren’t that good at playing our instruments. I like to think that that’s how it happened because, you know, if kids want to form a band, they think that they have to learn everything before they can start playing. I think that is wrong. Just start doing and something will come out of it. If it’s good, great. If it’s not, who cares? We were shit musicians and were just lucky to have found the sound. I think sound is also an attitude—something you can’t plan. You hit a button on an effects pedal and think, ‘Oh, that sounds terribly interesting. How can I recreate that?’ Being unafraid to experiment with that is really important.

‘Experimental’ is what your band is often called, but there is also a sort of finality and precision to it.

That is not from me. When Jónsi sort of came in, I guess that became a new band. Jónsi brought the skills to finalize songs. We were just halfway through 100 songs, starting a lot and never finishing. He’d be like, ‘We should finish this and work this out,’ he had a lot of ideas and was able to finalize all of these songs.

You grew up involved in music scenes that are very small and sort of evolved in a vacuum. From your experience, what is the best way to nurture those scenes?

The first thing that pops into my mind would be to stick together. I think that’s what happened in this period of time here in Iceland. There was this communal feeling in bands. It didn’t matter if you were in a glam band, indie, metal, or even a hip hop band, everyone was playing together. We would get a phone call from all sorts of bands saying they’re playing a show in a basement and would ask if we wanted to play for 30 minutes, and we would pile into our van with all of our gear and play music that was maybe completely different from the band who called us. There was this sense of community and compassion.

Was it a big scene when you were growing up?

We were mostly playing to each other. 98 per cent of the audience in the room would be the other bands, basically. Nobody would buy tickets to anything but we didn’t care because of this strong sense of community, regardless of what sort of music you played. I think that was the heart and soul of what was happening in that time period, when we were starting to play live. Those were the shows that kind of made us. People started recognizing our name, especially after we released our record. I mean, most people didn’t know our music but they knew our name from posters or whatever. That sense of community definitely helped us. It was a fun time and definitely did something for us.

Now that I’ve gotten you talking about your beginnings, how do you feel about your massive creative output and position in musical culture today?

It is a little bit funny that we’ve started looking at each other and thinking, ‘Oh, we are the old guys in the scene now.’ Which is fine, it’s just that we’ve only recently realized that we have a heritage. Kids are discovering us now and thinking they want to play something like us, and what a fantastic feeling that is to think that we’ve contributed a little something towards creativity in the world. I mean, it gives meaning to what we have been doing all these years. It was hard sometimes to even think that we would get here. We had arguments, long periods of time away from our families, it was hard work. But now we get to sit and think about how we may have contributed a little grain of sand to the beach of music. God, what am I even saying?

Ah yes, the big old beach. What have you been listening to at your place and in your everyday life?

I have a new favourite band that I’ve been listening to a lot. I don’t know how, but I think it’s pronounced Kir-Gil-Chin?

How’s it spelled?

C-H-I-R-G-I-L-C-H-I-N.

Yeah, I have no idea how that’s pronounced.

I think they’re from the Republic of Tuva. It’s a bit obscure, I guess. I just heard one of their songs on the radio the other day. We have two radio channels in Iceland, one is more pop and the other is a little more obscure. Anyway, I heard it and Shazam’ed it and it is just fantastic.

That band’s name translates to ‘dance of the air in the heat of the day.’

Hmm, okay, great? That’s cool.

What is it about the band are you’re into?

It’s super melodic. I have no idea what they’re singing about, but it sounds good. A bit like us, I gues —when we sing in Icelandic, no one knows what we are talking about, but the sound carries the feeling and people get it. It’s the same with this music, you just hear it in the music that they’re singing about something sad or happy. They do this throat singing which takes years and years of practice. I guess that’s the opposite of what I was saying before about just plugging in and playing, but still. I’m sure that a lot of people will hear it and turn it off immediately because it sounds weird, but I love it. I’ve also been listening to the new record from Low, Hey What. It’s one of the best records I’ve heard in a very long time.

Are either of these bands going to influence your record that’s coming out?

Well, the Chirgilchin hasn’t because I’ve only just started listening. In some ways, the Low record has influenced a little. When you hear it, you wouldn’t think so, but we were all listening to it a lot as we were recording and mixing.

Are there any parting words you’re allowed to say about the new record?

I guess I’d like to say that it’s introspective. I’m not sure if the other guys in the band would use that word, but I do, because it is very much a record that was made because we wanted to make it and we like it. It’s very far from the sort of, ‘Let’s make a hit record!’ attitude. I’m not saying it’s bad or completely obscure, we are just searching for some sort of beauty that we enjoy, that brings us back to the old days where we didn’t care if anyone else liked the music. We made what we liked. In some ways, the new record is a continuation of that. We hope people like it—I’d be very glad if people enjoyed it—but then again, I’ve come to realize that some people like things and some won’t, and that’s okay. It’s grand and small at the same time.

Pick up your copy of Monster Children Issue #70 right here (US only).