Jonsi Birgisson Sheds Light on Sigur Ros Hiatus

Posted on Apr 20th 2010 10:00AM by Steve Baltin
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Chalk up another band hiatus to much ado about nothing. With Sigur Ros frontman Jonsi Birgisson having just released his debut solo album and his bandmates taking time off to be with their new babies, the Icelandic group was reported to be on "indefinite hiatus" after scrapping a new album.

That's news to Birgisson though. "I don't even know where this word comes from," he told Spinner backstage at Coachella. "I didn't say that. I never heard this word before in my life." In fact, he believes Sigur Ros will be getting back to work this year. "I'm gonna record some other stuff with Sigur Ros when I'm home," he said. But it will be between his solo dates, as Birgisson is still focusing on his new venture.

"It's kind of exciting," he said before making his solo Coachella debut after two previous appearances with Sigur Ros. "Trying to play with different people should be fun for me actually." Still, all is good in the world of Sigur Ros. The solo album came about because the opportunity presented itself. "I always wanted to do a solo album, but never thought about it seriously until maybe last year when everybody had babies, kind of perfect timing for me just to do something on my own," he said. "I had these songs for such a long time, like 10, 15 years, some of the songs, so I decided to have some housecleaning and get it out of my brain."

Doing a solo album gave him the chance to do something totally different than with his band. "Basically, how Sigur Ros works, we write everything together from the beginning, from scratch, all of us, always together, so nobody brings a song to the band," he said. "Therefore, I have a s---load of songs I've just been doing by myself for many, many years. So when I started this album I had 30 songs, I wanted to get it down to 15, then nine for the album."

With years of material, how did he determine which nine to include? "My boyfriend Alex, he kind of helped me produce the album and he also helped me choose the songs and how to structure them," he said, "and it slowly becomes quite obvious which songs there should be."

Not all of the leftover songs will have to wait for the next round of Sigur Ros babies though. "Yeah, I'm playing a lot of songs that are not on the album. It's only nine songs and we play like 15 on the tour," he said. "We have an amazing show that we're really excited about."