Interview: Jonsi Birgisson, musician, Sigur Ros

We're in the plush Kensington offices of his label, EMI, and the publicist is starting to look harassed. Ten minutes pass, then 15. Birgisson, better known as simply Jonsi, the name under which he has just released his debut solo album, has rather appropriately wandered off on his own. Finally the call comes. Jonsi is shopping in Whole Foods Market, yes, going wild in the aisles of the temple where organic-obsessed foodies go to worship.

Long gone are the days when bands rolled up two hours late, the stink of the tour bus on their skin, last night's beer on their breath. The only substance Jonsi is likely to be high on when he arrives is wheatgrass.

So, oddly for a music interview, we begin with food. A year ago Jonsi and his American artist boyfriend Alex Somers, while making an album of instrumental mood music called Riceboy Sleeps, made the decision to eat an exclusively raw diet. They are now certified raw food chefs, have given up caffeine, and have a video section on their website where they cook up such dubious delights as raw strawberry pie.

"They couldn't get me anything here so I had to run out," Jonsi explains in heavily accented English. He runs through today's lunch, slapping tubs on the table and swigging coconut water from a carton. "Some really nice salad, guacamole, olives, crispbread, raw chocolate… Really cool stuff. You want to try some?"

He breaks off a square and starts waxing lyrical about the depth of flavour that can be achieved with unroasted cacao beans. "I have to plan out all my meals. It's really fun. Everything you eat is alive so you get much more energy in your body. It's very creative." Does he view food in the same way as he does music? "Yes," he nods. "It's all an experiment."

Jonsi is in high spirits today, which the publicist later speculates is because I got him while he was eating lunch. Everything is either "really cool" or "really fun" and he giggles and shifts his skinny frame like a schoolboy, getting his iPod out to play Carmen Miranda, and gushing about Somers, who inspired him to sing in English on his solo record, Go, also acting as co-producer.

"I met his brother who came to our gig in Boston and gave me some of his music," he says. "He brought Alex backstage and I fell in love, totally, the first moment I saw him. I had never seen any boy so beautiful in my life."

I was expecting Jonsi to be more monosyllabic, in keeping with a band who once released an album called () on which all eight songs had no name. Sigur Ros are notorious for being taciturn and oblique in interviews. As purveyors of the kind of stirring, transcendental post-rock that has led many an overemotional music critic to evoke lonely polar bears and glacial landscapes, the shoe somehow fits. But not any more. "We are just four silly guys," says Jonsi affably, pushing more raw chocolate in my direction.

The fact is, Sigur Ros have grown up and loosened up. "We hated interviews," Jonsi confesses. "We hated photographs. We hated all the stuff that came with the music. We wanted the music to speak for us. We used to find it really annoying, all that s*** about it being like the landscape of Iceland. Everyone always talking about elves." I point out that in his patchwork green sweater and jaunty quiff he looks a bit elfin today. Jonsi giggles. "We're fine with it now."

Go is a gorgeously giddy album, a buoyant collection of nine songs written over the past 10 years, given wings by composer du jour Nico Muhly's arrangements and brought back down to earth by Samuli Kosminen's militaristic drumming. Initially Jonsi wanted to make an intimate folk album, but it didn't work out that way. "It started with me writing songs in my house with piano, ukulele, acoustic guitar and harmonium," he says. "Then it turned into this crazy monster."

Jonsi met Muhly, who has worked with Bjork and Antony and the Johnsons, in New York while touring with Sigur Ros. "Then I heard his music and really loved it," he says. "It was like splashes of colour, drowning strings through whole songs. It was so spontaneous and fun." Muhly travelled to downtown Reykjavik, where Jonsi lives with Somers, and the songs went from intimate to orchestral in a single night. "We did five arrangements that night," Jonsi continues. "Then we went to Connecticut and recorded the album in three weeks, all the strings, brass and wind instruments. I sang and played piano and guitar. Samuli came with this suitcase of trash and toys and taped things to the drumkit."

Did he always intend to write the songs in English? "Yes, but it was a big challenge for me," Jonsi admits. "I learn new words each day."

The three other members of Sigur Ros, named after Jonsi's sister who was born the same year the band was formed, haven't heard the record. Despite the rumours, there is no Sigur Ros split on the horizon. "They just all went off and had babies," says Jonsi. "Three babies! That's why it was the perfect time for me to do my own album and work with Alex." He would love to collaborate with Iceland's other biggest musical export, Bjork, he adds. "That would be really fun. Me and Bjork talk about it when we're really drunk together in some bar in Iceland."

Jonsi grew up in a small village outside Reykjavik. His father was a blacksmith, his mother a nurse. There was nowhere for Jonsi to buy records, nowhere to see bands, and nowhere to meet other gay people. The first record he bought, at the age of 13, was Killers by Iron Maiden. "They were the first band I saw too," he recalls. "Once a year a foreign band would come to Reykjavik." Jonsi was a metalhead and the first song he wrote was called Metal Maniac.

By the time he was 18, Jonsi had abandoned grunge and rock bands and was getting into ambient music. "That was when Sigur Ros started," he explains. "We wanted to make this spacious ambient music but didn't know which way to go. Then our drummer gave our bass player a cello bow, I picked it up, started playing my guitar with it and for some reason started singing in falsetto. It was cool. It was the first time I ever felt comfortable singing." Jonsi is currently obsessed with music from the 1940s and says he is only listening to Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt and Carmen Miranda. "It's the atmosphere," he says. "The recordings make you feel like you're in front of a warm fire. Maybe I'll make a crooner album like that when I'm old."

Jonsi never expected Sigur Ros's epic music to be heard outside the borders of Iceland. When Hoppipolla, their ethereal 2006 single, accompanied a David Attenborough wildlife series suddenly Sigur Ros were popping up wherever awe-inducing music was required. They didn't like it one bit.

Now Jonsi gets more animated talking about his recipe for raw cashew curry than he does dwelling on royalty cheques. "You grow up in Iceland listening to all these British and American bands," he says. "You start one up because it's cool. You never expect it to be like this." He gestures around the plush office. "When the sales first came we were really anal about where our music was played but you learn to relax and let go. Now it's all cool." v

Jonsi, Go, is out now (EMI)

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, April 11, 2010