Brian Eno sez ambient music should be as easy to pay attention to as it is to ignore. Classical music aims for a transcendence only sometimes secular, a concept that most people I know are either too cynical or too ADD to be all that interested in (myself admittedly included.) So where does Ólafur Arnalds, who’s spent the better part of a decade establishing his bonafides at the intersection of these two forms, fit in?
Surprisingly, it fits him in packed concert halls pretty much all over the world. He brought a weirdly lively crowd to the Moore Theatre last Saturday, who seemed to know a lot of his songs by heart and enthusiastically yelled out to him between songs. The audience probably skewed older; there were a few kids that looked maybe a little older than me, but they were dressed way too well-dressed to be college kids — my guess was either finance types or tech peoples. I don’t know if the show was sold out, but the floor was absolutely packed and the two levels of balcony seating seemed full as well. Arnalds didn’t bring an opening act on this tour.
As for the man himself? Arnalds was charming in a boyish, distinctly Nordic way; he stands and sits with a bit of a slouch, he’s got a dry but pretty wicked sense of humor, and he honestly looks pretty out of place within his own, very lavish stage design. Flanked on either side by string players, a live drummer, a rack of synthesizers and even two player pianos, the stage was opulent to the extreme, and his backing band oozed quiet, symphony player-professionalism. Meanwhile there’s Arnalds, in the middle of it all, slouched in a plain white t-shirt, kind of awkwardly swaying to the tune of his own playing on a giant Steinway in the perfect middle of the stage. Still, I’ve got to hand it to him — especially with the ultra-coordinated light show, some of his performances got pretty rousing.
As for the music, I’m personally of two minds of it. On one hand, here are some slow, swelling, crescendo laden neo-classical pieces as performed by a pianist and a string quartet, with the bonus of some pretty nice synthesizer patches and the occasional rousing drum performance. It’s about a galaxy away from what usually sells tickets in a young city like Seattle, and I really wanted to feel refreshed by the seemingly high-minded change of pace that Arnalds offers with his music. On the other hand – and I know how this is going to sound – musically, conceptually, this was some pretty rudimentary stuff. Boiler plate pop song chord progressions stretched out over six minutes at a time with some swelling strings on top. Classical music for people who think Hans Zimmer is the best classical composer of all time. I guess I’m just pretentious, but it was kind of a bummer after awhile to be able to intuitively feel which note was coming next and never once, for a whole night, be surprised. Classical music stayed interesting well through the twentieth century and into the twenty first, thanks to forward-thinking composers that reimagined orchestral music, like Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Phillip Glass, and Tim Hecker. Up against those guys, Arnalds’ music probably sounds a little better suited to soundtrack a commercial for your local bank, or maybe like an oil company. I was reminded more than once throughout the night of a video essay by Every Frame A Painting, which illustrated how Marvel movies always choose music that only ever seemed to go through the motions of trying to evoke a feeling in listeners, without ever doing it; some of the music in this video upon re-watching actually genuinely reminded me of the music I heard at Arnalds’ concert.
If I sound upset, and maybe a little confused, I guess it’s cause I am. I was genuinely excited by the prospect of a young classical composer doing exciting modern things in orchestral composition and making money doing it. But if the music performed on Saturday night is anything to go off of, Arnalds seems to have found his audience more or less by repackaging pop music for people that are too pretentious for the radio, but not savvy enough to seek out music that’s actually interesting, challenging, provocative, or even close to transcendent. If you’re looking for modern classical music that isn’t going to pander to the lowest common denominator, Tim Hecker dropped a lovely album last year called Koyono. You can probably catch Ólafur Arnalds in the soundtrack of the next Avengers movie.
There was a really beautiful moment in the middle of the concert when everyone left the stage except for the string quartet’s viola, who performed a genuinely heartrending solo piece that was nakedly emotional, totally unadorned, and sounded partially improvised. Those four minutes alone almost redeemed the night, but the totally calculated vibes of the surrounding music really left me hanging. I guess Ólafur Arnalds just isn’t for me.
RILEY URBANO | I guess I’m just pretentious | KXSU Music Reporter