Soundbite: Explosions in the Sky
By Taleen Kalenderian
Feb. 19, 2007 9:01 p.m.
Explosions in the Sky
“All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone”
Temporary Residence Limited
4 Out of 5 Paws
It’s almost a stab to a band’s purported musical integrity to enumerate the validity of some albums through words alone.
For instance: It’s easy to call Explosions in the Sky a post-rock band. It’s even easier to compare them with Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Mogwai, bands which often take approaches that seem all-but-cerebral.
But EITS’s newest release, “All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone,” is perhaps the album which sets those issues aside. It offers the same musical eargasms that the group’s previous five albums provide (a result of their labyrinthine song structures, guitar tension-escalation-resolution, and military snare motifs), except now they’ve gained a visceral energy that may even get fans to stop comparing the album to its antecedents.
The album opens with a tempestuous crash of distortion in “The Birth and Death of the Day,” taking a self-aware Wagnerian notion of “beginnings” into opposition as it upwells into a sphere of harmonic unison on all instrumental counts.
After the elemental crux midway through “Welcome, Ghosts,” the track segues into the subtly dissonant guitars of “It’s Natural To Be Afraid,” a 13-minute opus which requires patience from the listener as it plateaus and resolves.
As such, each track reaches its focal point with a sense of profound demand, offering a feeling of engagement refreshingly different from previous albums.
“All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone” is the album that finally integrates the explosive live energy of the band into recording. Instead of a vain, mathematical approach, there is a certain maturity which doesn’t ask to be understood but simply bears itself outward for the taking.
E-mail Kalenderian at [email protected].
