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
Post Rock
Record #235: Deafheaven – Sunbather (2013)
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
Record #203: Collections of Colonies of Bees – GIVING (2011)
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.
Record #201 – Collections of Colonies of Bees – Customer (2004)
I got through about ten minutes of this record without realizing it was playing at the wrong speed.
Record #194: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000)
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.
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.
Record #193: The Appleseed Cast – Low Level Owl: Vols 1& 2 (2001)
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.
Record #162: Explosions in the Sky – All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
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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Record #161: Exitmusic – Passage (2012)
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
Record #146: Efterklang – Magic Chairs (2010)
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.
Record #145: Efterklang – Parades (2007)
If the cover is any indication, you can expect Parades to be an intricately arranged, multi-faceted affair that diverts off one direction then another then another then another. And you’d be right. Continue reading