godspeed you black emperor

Record #799: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – F♯ A♯ ∞ (1997)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Few bands have such celebrated reputations as  Godspeed You! Black Emperor. They are inarguably one of the pillars of the post rock movement—and rightly so. Their body of work is marked by a fiercely uncompromising vision, their albums filled with lengthy compositions that make no effort to be accessible. At this point in history, fans and critics alike revere their experimental ethos and artistic stubbornness.

But debuting with that sort of vision without the benefit of the legacy is a different sort of monster. The legendary post rock collective might be able to get away with releasing an album with two twenty-minute songs with multiple movements and no lyrics, but as a debut? That’s a bit more difficult to sell as an introduction.

Lucky for us though, Godspeed didn’t let pesky things like marketability or accessibility get in the way of their debut record.

Continue reading →

Record #738: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Asunder, Sweet, and Other Distress (2015)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Quebecois post rock demigods Godspeed You! Black Emperor are known for making songs that are weird, long, and loud. While this is plainly seen in all of their works, it’s perhaps best demonstrated by their 2015 album, Asunder, Sweet, and Other Distress, which for many years was performed at live shows as one single song, unofficially called “Behemoth.”

Caught on tape here for the first time (and their first album of new studio material in thirteen years) Asunder is a tour de force that showcases all of the project’s various indulgences.

Continue reading →

Record #194: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald
While critics of post rock often hold up Explosions in the Sky as the face of the genre’s more overly sentimental tendencies, Godspeed You! Black Emperor is cited as its overly ambitious, abstract dark side. And while this is true, like most criticisms of post rock, it also can serve as great praise. 
They have more in common with classical symphonies  than movie soundtracks, their narratives are more abstract than visual. Likewise, their presence is closer to that of an orchestra than a rock band,
​And on Lift Yr. Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven, the strength of the work matches the height of their ambitions. The record is two discs, and each side is a single work with several movements. While much of the album arranges and rearranges the same eerie, droning textures, guitar-based post rock, and vocal samples, Lift Yr. Skinny Fists… mostly showcases the vastness of GY!BE’s template.
​The opening minutes present the some of the purest jubilance that post rock has ever offered the world. Later, mourning violins and a screwdriver-fretted guitar weep under a pastor’s homily. “When you penetrate the most high God, you will believe you are mad. You will believe you’ve gone insane,” he proclaims. And as the record traffics through neo-classical, downtempo guitar jazz, sludging stoner rock, thrash metal, it seems that perhaps GY!BE really has seen the face of God. And it is their duty as artists to show what they have seen. ​