To gain entrance to Jónsi Birgisson's first private solo performance last March, attendees were required to dress as animals. The show was a final dress rehearsal at 3 Mills Studios in London, a few weeks before the Sigur Rós frontman's proper debut LP, Go, was released and his theatrical, projection-bolstered live setup would hit the road for much of 2010. There were women donning feathered headdresses, kids with furry earmuffs, and grown men in bear outfits nursing beers. Also amongst the crowd was a camera crew on hand to capture the event, footage of which has been spliced together with backstage scenes and interviews to comprise the visual half of Go Live, a DVD/CD available exclusively on Jónsi's website (and, apparently, in some Japanese shops). While the live audio recordings here were culled from a later show in Brussels, the relationship between the two halves is close. That scene in London mirrors what's been happening on every stage he took this year, the often playful, always kinetic spirit of Go come to life in more than one way.
Because Jónsi's only got the one record of his own material, he bulked up his setlist with tracks that are seeing release together for the first time here. Songs like the stately, fingerpicked opener "Stars in Still Water", forgettable "New Piano Song", or his contribution to the How to Train Your Dragon OST, "Sticks & Stones", add an extra layer of muscle to his sparse catalogue.
One of the major challenges Jónsi faced when bringing Go to the stage was in figuring out how to translate the indelible studio contributions of composer Nico Muhly and percussionist Samuli Kosminen. Each track here has been reworked terrifically, Muhly's lively flourishes sometimes left behind for ambience's sake, but never far at all. Instead, like in the nearly three-minute intro to "Tornado", a similar magic and color is conjured by bells, piano flurries, and xylophonic tapestry. In that vein, "Boy Lilikoi" feels warmer and more spritely. Jónsi's band has been able to generate extraordinary levels of texture, the crisp sound of live percussion alone enough to give already strong arrangements new breath.
As compelling as the many visual elements (see the Never Never Land sartorial decisions, atavistic animations, interview snippets, HD everything) on the DVD can be, the Fifty Nine Productions-helmed film is more a document of their concepts than the actual Jónsi live experience. That's why the album itself seems all the more necessary. The sonics are appropriately huge, and there at its center is an instrument that's better recorded than it could ever be filmed: Jónsi's voice. It arches, it splays, it cloys, it still coats everything here with expansive, far-reaching qualities that befit the cinematic nature of his songwriting.
What's particularly special about Go Live is the fact that Jonsi's vocalizing loses the safety netting and sheen it enjoys in a studio. There are moments, like in the early quiet of closer "Grow Till Tall", when he goes unimaginably high, his cords unable to hold up as long as he'd like. You can hear him inhale and you can hear his voice give out ever so briefly. Part of the appeal in seeing Jónsi (or Sigur Rós for that matter) in a live setting for the first/any time is being able to attach faces to often-faceless music. When Jónsi's voice cracks, what was alien on record now sounds positively human.
