WHAT DO YOU CALL SOMEONE FROM ICELAND?

I love going to gigs. Ever since I spent a sweltering day in 1993 in Milton Keynes, watching Bon Jovi - supported by Little Angels, Manic Street Preachers and Billy Idol - I've been hooked. Last night I went to see Sigur Ros.

The 14-piece Icelandic wonders wowed the freaks and geeks at the Hammersmith Apollo throughout their two-hour set. There was no mosh pit. No head-banging. And, remarkably for a band with such a cult following, no singing along. Not a single word. The most worked up the audience got was a few nods to the drum beat or guitar riff.

Admittedly, this is largely because the band warbles away in its native tongue (and even to Icelandic people it's largely unintelligible stuff - incidentally, I did wonder during the evening what a person from Iceland is called. If a Danish person is a Dane, and a British person is a Briton, is someone from Iceland an Icelandic. I looked it up later to find that they're in fact known as Icelanders). Even so, I tried to mimic them as best I could, though after standing up for three hours my efforts were only half-hearted.

The lead singer, whose name escapes me, has a voice like a strangled lamb. But it works, even as he strums his guitar with a violin's fiddle.