At this point in time, the biggest question I ask about anything the Antlers could release is “will it get me to stop listen to Undersea?” And four tracks though it was, that extended play was one of the most beautiful records released in 2012, and it remains a fixture on my turntable. So when the mood strikes for the Antlers, will anything replace its sublime wonder, or should I just play the disc I have?
Here’s the thing about post rock. As much as the term brings up images of heavily delayed guitars playing glacially paced riffs until they explode into bombast, that hardly accounts for every group under the term’s large umbrella. Continue reading
Since my second or third year of college, the surest way to keep me from listening to something has been to drop the word “metal” in its description. Metal (and by extension, hardcore) was something I had enjoyed while I was following the scene, but I had grown out of it and moved on to the greener, more mature pastures of folk, electronica, and art rock. Continue reading
In my last CCoB post, I likened the way they built their compositions to a game of Jenga–elements are added then removed and placed elsewhere until they can go no higher (higher in terms of form, not in terms of emotional climax, which they don’t trouble themselves with).
On GIVING (their first release after being brought to a wider audience by Volcano Choir, the band they’re in with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon) the game is a little more direct.
The pieces aren’t as oddly shaped as on Birds, nor do they shy away from sudden dynamic shifts like their brothers on the other end of post rock, Explosions in the Sky. In fact, the end of “Lawns” might even find a place in a movie trailer some day—but for an art house indie drama rather than a football movie.
That’s not to suggest (as some have) that GIVING finds CCoB taking the easy way out. There’s still plenty avant-garde textures: “Lawns” itself has a strange vocal part created on a sampler. “Vorms” features an interlude of no fewer than a dozen looped instrument).
In the end, GIVING is just as masterfully crafted as Birds, deciding instead to use combine that experimentation with more immediacy.
I got through about ten minutes of this record without realizing it was playing at the wrong speed.
The Appleseed Cast can be a strange beast to pin down. When I first heard them on various Deep Elm Records samplers, they were obviously an emo band. Then in college, when a friend sent me “Fight Song” off of Two Conversations, I put it on my indie rock playlist in iTunes.
Then most recently, the drummer in my band referred to them as one of his favorite post rock bands. And now, as I’ve rediscovered their magnus opus, a sprawling two volume opus on three discs, I’ve found that none of those are that far off.
Not everyone likes Explosions in the Sky, but no one who dislikes them does so because they don’t make beautiful music.
Simplified restatement: Explosions in the Sky makes beautiful music and no denies this.
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I first heard of Exitmusic from an article that likened them to Beach House. I listened to a track through that lens, and I didn’t like it.
A few weeks later, I gave them another shot. This time, that lens was shattered by the opening title track, which had more in common with Explosions in the Sky’s more frantic moments than anything Beach House has ever done. Continue reading
Like 2007’s Parades, Magic Chairs can also be likened to its album cover. Where as Parades Escher-esque cover was meandering and intricate and climbing and falling (as was the music therein), Magic Chairs’s steady structure and floating ribbons hits the music on the mark.