MUSIC: Jonsi’s ready to go

After years spent on the road, you might think that Jonsi Birgisson would relish the chance to put his feet up.

But the Sigur Ros frontman made an instant decision when the rest of his band needed to take time off - and decided to focus his energies into making a solo album.

“I don’t know if I’m a workaholic. I just like to be doing stuff,” the laconic Icelander says, from a hotel in Copenhagen.

“It’s hard for me to have a holiday for more than two days. After that I want to be back trying things. I just like to be always doing stuff.”

Such new ideas can be heard on Go, his collection of celestial pop songs he released earlier this year, filled with warm tunes and Jonsi’s unique vocals.

His desire to experiment and push the boundaries will be seen and heard at the O2 Academy in just over a week, when he takes to the stage on September 5. Not only will the gig feature Jonsi playing with an all new band, he’s also promising a spectacular style of stage show, having worked with the American group 59 Productions to set up his touring production.

“I’m quite a visual person, and like to stimulate different senses,” he says.

“I think we just wanted to try something a bit different with a live show. These guys come from a theatre and opera background, and that was quite refreshing rather than a rock’n’roll background.

“It’s quite nice to go away from that (rock) style. 59 work a lot with projections and with animation, so that brings something different. But it can still be like a rock show, in that we’re playing live.

“They came out to Iceland when I was in the middle of recording the album. I played them the songs, explained what they were about, showed them some lyrics, and they took the ideas from there and came up with how the show would work.

“They then did the whole show from there, and I’m super-happy with how it turned out.”

However, fans of Sigur Ros’s inimitable brand of otherworldly post-rock shouldn’t hit the panic button just yet.

Jonsi admits the group only took a break due to other band members having family commitments, and that they’ll be returning to the recording studio next year.

“We’d been touring for a long time and the other guys had other things going on, like our keyboardist had a baby, and shortly after that the drummer and bass player had babies as well.

“So it was the right time for me to go off and do something on my own. The album is all songs I’d been writing by myself for years, so now was the perfect time to do it.

“This (touring Go) will be on until the end of the year, then we’ll probably go into making music with Sigur Ros after that.

“Hopefully we’ll have a new album out by the end of 2011.”

For now though, Jonsi is eager to chat about Go. He’s been enjoying the new experience of touring with a new band, and believes that the new album and tour have let him test himself.

“It’s definitely different. I’ve been playing with Sigur Ros for 16 years, and touring for 10 or 12 years, so to step away and be on my own is a bit different. But at the same time, it’s healthy to play with different people, different musicians and test yourself.”

“I didn’t have any time to be nervous about it when we started gigging, I just wanted to go with the flow.”

The record features numerous songs he’d been writing over the years, just for fun, and the key for Jonsi was ensuring there was a sense of impulsiveness running through the album.

“It has to be spontaneous when I‘m recording, so I can experiment with what I want and then decide what I actually want. I think I’m quite a spontaneous person overall, in that I like to work fast and be creative in the studio– I kinda like accidents when writing, things that aren’t planned, that just happen. The second song on the album, Animal Arithmetic, was written two days before I went into the studio to record, so it was the newest song and was something I wasn’t going to record originally.”

And, as you might expect from someone who loves spontaneity, Jonsi is eager to get to Glasgow, where he can’t wait for the crowd reaction.

“We love to play in Glasgow, the crowds are always so energetic, it’s really nice. It’s good for us to feel the energy from the audience. You always get pumped up when you can hear that someone likes what you’re doing.

“We did the Semisonic festival in Japan, and after the first song it was so quiet – Japanese audiences are very different.

“Nobody clapped, it was just total silence. I’m not really used to it! They were so respectful. I think Glasgow will be a bit more raucous though!”