Video Premiere: Sigur Rós: "Heima"
In early October, Sigur Rós played a show at the French Institute in New York. The occasion was a screening of the Dean Deblois-directed band documentary/love-letter to Iceland Heima, which comes out on DVD tomorrow, and they warmed up the crowd by playing three songs in low-key acoustic mode. Pitchfork was on hand to film their set, and here's the band's performance of the film's title track.
Seeing the footage of the band playing interspersed with clips from the film gets me thinking about the first time I heard about Sigur Rós, from a piece by fellow writer Brent DiCrescenzo on this very website. They were crazy obscure then, and I remember that his description of their record made it sound like pretty incredible stuff. Now, here we are almost eight years later and they've become, relatively speaking, huge, playing big theaters at high-culture festivals. And their sound, which has changed in the interim, is still as lovely as ever. Enjoy.
[original track from the Heima DVD; out 12/04/07 on XL]