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MUSIC INTERVIEW: Jonsi
"All of them had babies – three babies in one year. It felt like the perfect time for me to do something on my own."
Jonsi Birgisson is reflecting on why he has chosen now to launch a solo career, away from his bandmates in Sigur Ros.
Contrary to those internet rumours that the band has been mothballed indefinitely, it seems the multi-million-selling Icelanders are simply on a temporary sabbatical, raising young families.
Meanwhile their singer is using the time productively on other projects. Last year there was an ambient album Riceboy Sleeps with his boyfriend Alex Somers, a graphic artist who designed many of the sleeves for Sigur Ros records.
Now comes Go, a joyful, outgoing solo album, out on Monday.
"There are more upbeat songs on the album," says Jonsi. "They are colourful, playful songs. Some have a dance beat, with some acoustic in there."
He has a fondness, he says, "for beaty dance music", revealed last year in his collaboration for DJ Tiesto's album Kaleidoscope.
"The music I listen to all the time at home is old jazz – Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt and Bing Crosby. There's a lot of opposites."
Go features many more English lyrics than we've been accustomed to from Sigur Ros. Does this mean Hopelandic, the made-up language employed on many of Sigur Ros's best-known tunes such as Hoppipolla and Glosoli, has had its day?
"I guess so," Jonsi says. "Some journalist came up with that name. It means gibberish, gobbledigook. When you write songs all singers do it. You just sing something."
Like the language Elizabeth Fraser once used to sing in in the Cocteau Twins, it just happened to suit the complex, indefinable mood of the songs.
When Jonsi writes, he think about aural textures as much as lyrics and melodies.
"Definitely. I really think about soundscapes and how things sound. I'm really big on everything sounding organic. There are a lot of shapes going on – I'm probably more interested in doing that than doing lyrics."
To accompany Go, Jonsi is about to embark on a world tour, starting in Canada on April 6. His won't be any ordinary stage show, though, as he's brought in Fifty Nine Productions to design the set and multimedia elements to go with each song.
"It's really over the top, really cool," says the 34-year old singer. "These two guys come from the theatre and opera world. It's different from the rock and roll world. They work a lot in projections and animation and stuff like that.
"It's going to be really exciting. For a long time I wanted to move away from this typical rock and roll show, with Las Vegas lights. Everything looks the same nowdays. It's going to be really cool. I'm super-excited about this."
Though Jonsi says "it's basically just (Fifty Nine Productions's) show", he was closely involved in the planning stage.
"We met in Iceland. I showed them the songs and the lyrics. I told them when I was writing the songs a lot of animals were lurking in the background – owls hooting, birds flying about. They went on from there; they did their own thing. We worked a little bit through the internet. They showed me clips and animation."
With a hefty schedule of concerts in prospect this year, it's perhaps as well Jonsi likes touring. "It's fun. You go to different places, see different cities, meet different people. It's really exciting."
There are still countries he'd like to visit though. "I want to go to China and South America," he says.
That may have to wait for the next Sigur Ros tour, however. "I'm going to meet with them and write more songs. There will hopefully be a new album in 2011."
Go is released on Monday, April 5. Jonsi plays at the London Forum on May 26 and 27, at the Latitude Festival in Suffolk on July 18 and Bestival on the Isle of Wight on September 11.
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