Björk at Shrine Auditorium
Björk doesn’t simply play a concert, she designs and stages them, and her Cornucopia Tour show in January, by her own description, the most theatrical thing she’s ever created. The video visuals were stunning and surreal, the stage set intriguing, her costumes as usual gorgeously avant-garde. There was a septet of flutists who danced behind her. None of that matters, though, without the music, and Björk’s vocals were moving, emotional and beautiful throughout.
Rammstein at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
Rammstein was as amazingly spectacular as Björk in an entirely different way. Where the Icelandic singer is a sprite skipping through the woods, the German industrial metal band is a Teutonic giant setting the forest ablaze. Seriously, there were 586 pyro cues in the show. Flames rocketed across the stadium on wires. Singer Till Lindemann wore a backpack that shot 20-foot bursts of flame out of nine tubes. And the songs, sung in German, delivered a brutal, body-shaking beauty.