The band’s image as Iceland’s joyous musical elves was destroyed by allegations of tax evasion and sexual assault. Now a trio, they explain their search for beauty with their first album in a decade
Sigur Rós’s new album Átta, their first in a decade, is a tender and consoling piece of work that seems to extend a healing hand to the listener. Given the dramatic events in the band members’ lives during its long gestation, you suspect it serves a similar purpose for the Icelanders themselves. “It’s a comfort blanket for us maybe,” agrees frontman Jón Pór “Jónsi” Birgisson from his home in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. The period the album emerged from was, he says, “depressing and heavy and intense”.
In March 2018, the Icelandic government accused Sigur Rós of evading 151m króna (£840,000) of tax between 2010 and 2014. The band blamed an accounting error and repaid the debt plus interest, but faced a second prosecution for the same offence in 2020, which froze their assets. They have all now been acquitted but Birgisson has been off the hook only since March. And that was not all. In September 2018, artist Meagan Boyd publicly accused drummer Orri Páll Dýrason of sexual assault five years earlier. Dýrason denied the allegations but resigned a few days later, temporarily reducing Sigur Rós to a transatlantic duo of Birgisson and bassist Georg “Goggi” Hólm. Did it still feel like a band at all?
