By: Jon Behm
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Amiina - Photo by Jon Behm
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Due to timing, I have never been able to see the Icelandic quartet Sigur Ros when they have played in town. So, when I found out last night that their similar-sounding tour mates, Amiina, were playing at the Varsity Theater, I rushed over after leaving work in St. Paul to at least get a taste of what I have been missing.
Unfortunately, I did not make it in time to see the opener, Tom Brosseau, the extremely talented folk artist from Grand Forks. From what I gathered, though, he performed a very quiet but impressive set. In fact, I was informed by more than one person that he was the “quietest singer [they] had ever heard.”
It wasn’t about to get any louder, either. As Amiina appeared on the stage, the already taciturn audience became completely silent. Four hippy-ish women floated up through the darkness to their instruments, which were strewn throughout the stage. It was so still and hushed that I had a childlike impulse to pass gas, if only to tell the band that, “yes, there is indeed a living person in the audience.” Instead, I clumped around like a Brontosaurus, trying to take pictures in the dim light until a bouncer informed me that my camera was “making too much noise.”
The beginning of an Amiina show is like sliding into sleep. The music comes slowly in whispers from all corners of the stage, lulling, ethereal. Their instruments included a cello, violin, xylophones, a guitar, keyboard, wine glasses, a saw, and the ubiquitous laptop, amongst other things that I could not identify. So many instruments, however, created very little noise. What they did create was a minimalist orchestra of unusual and beautiful music.
There were bells, chimes, ambient drones, shimmering strings, a saw played with a bow, humming, twangs, the ringing of crystal wine glasses, and vocal chords sung without words. What could have been a cacophony, instead was pieced together expertly into a patchwork of smooth mellowness. Well, maybe not expertly; the girls faltered noticeably more than once, and cut off a few songs hastily in little fits of giggling. “That was a disaster,” one of them informed us meekly on one such occasion.
Honestly, their mistakes were not as noticeable as their self-conscious attitude toward them. If they had simply gone on playing confidently, I doubt that many of the audience members would notice the screw-ups at all, as enmeshed as they were in the entire orchestration.
Self-conscious, though, the band was to a fault. Band members spoke rarely, and usually only to say “thank you for listening.” When cellist Sólrún Sumarliðadóttir (pronounce that one) suggested to us that we check out the band’s merchandise for sale, it came out haltingly, as if someone had put a gun to her head before the show and demanded that she sell more t-shirts. I felt that this was probably largely due to the language barrier. The band spoke in very heavily accented English, but chatted quickly amongst themselves in what must have been Icelandic.
Where the band succeeded the most was when their vocals came into play, as the women had beautiful voices and harmonized perfectly. They sung no words; words would have been inappropriate to the music’s unobtrusiveness. While at times, some of the more minimal songs leaned towards new age yoga studio schlock, the vocals added a dark, haunting quality, as if they were designed to be played in the yoga studio at the edge of the apocalypse.
Amiina is the kind of music I would want to listen to if I was taking some “me” time to meditate or take a bath with scented candles. However, since I never meditate and my bathtub is the last place I would ever want to lay down in, I will probably not hear them a great deal in the near future. I don’t say this because I don’t think that they are a quality band; in fact I think that they play truly beautiful music. I usually listen to music in my car, though, and though beautiful, this is the kind of music that could put me to sleep at the wheel.
Location Info:
The Varsity Theater
Artist Info: Amiina
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