Sigur Ros @ Carling Academy, 6 Nov

You may have loved the 27 or so times you’ve seen Back to the Future, but you simply can’t deny the grandeur of the one and only time you saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. When it comes to live performances, it’s easy to overlook sheer immensity amidst the hipness of pint-sized subterranean gigs just down the street, but tonight our Icelandic visitors are prepared to aim high, and they do so flawlessly.

Opening band For A Minor Reflection (***) provide an apt Scandinavian-Mogwai overture for the night, with post-rock instrumentation crescendoing all through the set. They do sound a bit like Sigur Ros’ eager younger brother, but the walls of Glasgow’s Carling Academy are shaking all the same.

Sigur Ros (*****) take the stage quietly (discounting the uproarious applause) with the eerie beep of opening number Svefn-g-Englar, and the dream begins. Vocalist Jonsi Birgisson tears across his guitar with a violin bow like some sort of necromancer extricating oceanic whale noises from a stringed instrument, ending the song by howling falsettos straight into his guitar pickups. From then on the set oscillates between the band’s more recent poppier moments (with Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur being a particular highlight) and plateaux of ambience enhanced by the cosmic visuals. Everything comes to a climax with the acoustic frolic of Gobbledigook: the boys from For A Minor Reflection come out to pound along on infantry drums and an unimaginable amount of confetti drops from the ceiling during the vocal breakdown. Sigur Ros take their final bow, and the audience is left a sea of bedazzled multi-coloured heads.