SOUNDTRACK: EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY-Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (2011).
I found out about Explosions in the Sky because of the events of 9/11. Back when everyone was looking for albums to point fingers at in some kind of hysteria (that’s also how I found out about I am the World Trade Center who are not as exciting as Explosions…).
EITS make beautiful epic instrumental music (as well as the soundtrack for Friday Night Lights). They play music in a similar vein to Mogwai, but they take their epic instrumentals in a different direction. And this album is perhaps their most commercial to date (as commercial as you can be when you write 10 minute instrumentals). And while “commercial” is not usually an adjective that I give as praise, for this album it is indeed.
Take Care, Take Care Take Care is a terrific album. It ‘s not as visceral as past releases; rather, it seems like a more experienced band playing with their sound and tweaking it in subtle ways to make it less obviously dramatic but somehow more powerful.
On “Last Known Surroundings,” there are soaring guitars that give way to simple, pretty guitar riffs. Martial drums propel the songs forward, even if they lead to unexpected places. It’s soundtrack music that’s not background music.
Perhaps the biggest difference with this album and previous ones is that this album doesn’t quite live up to the band’s name. There’s no major explosive crescendos. There are noisy bits but they’re not climactic per se. “Human Qualities” slows to a quiet drum beat and while you’d expect to come out of that with a cacophonous explosion, it doesn’t. The explosion does come later, but only after it has worked up to it again.
“Trembling Hands” features “voices.” Or maybe just one voice. It’s on a loop that becomes more of a sound than a voice. The song is only 3 minutes long, but it’s an intense 3 minutes–more great drum work on this one.
“Be Comfortable, Creature” has a beautiful delicate guitar opening that drifts into a kind of solo. After 3 minutes it settles into the main riff, a winding guitar line that send you on a journey. “Postcard from 1952” is a great song. It begins as quiet intertwining guitars and slowly builds and builds into a gorgeous rocking conclusion. 7 minutes of steady growth with a nice epilogue at the end.
The final song, “Let Me Back In” also has kind of spooky voices that appears throughout the song (distorted and repeated). But you know this song is a winner from the get go (even if the opening chord structure is a bit like Duran Duran’s “Come Undone.”) It’s a slow builder, a cool, moody ten minute piece. When you get to the beautiful descending guitar riff that shoots out after about 2 minutes, it’s an ecstatic moment–air guitars are mandatory.
And let’s talk packaging. The album comes in a gate-fold type of cardboard. If you open it up all the way it can be folded into a little house (with windows and a door and a chimney). That’s pretty cool, guys.
If I have one compliant about the album it’s that the quiets are really quiet and he louds are really loud. That makes this a very difficult album to listen to say, at work, or basically anywhere where other people will be blown away by your speakers. The middle of “Human Qualities” for instance, is really quiet, you feel like you need to turn it up to hear the drum beat–there’s too much volume fiddling (listening in the car by yourself negates any reason for this complaint, of course).
Keep it up, guys.
More “controversy” from the band
[READ: September 10, 2011] New Yorker essays
Ten years ago, The New Yorker published several short essays by famous and (to me anyway) not so famous writers. They were all written directly in the aftermath of the attacks and they were moving and powerful. I was going to wait until today to re-read them and post about them, but for various reasons, I decided to do it on May 12.
Now, ten years later, The New Yorker has published several more essays by famous and (to me anyway) not so famous writers. I note that none of the authors are the same (that might have been interesting) although Zadie Smith does quote from John Updike’s piece of ten years ago.
The strange thing to me about these pieces is that ten years seems to have hindered the writers’ ability to focus on the incident and to talk about What It Means. In this collection of essays, we have a few that talk about an individual and how his life has changed since 9/11. These are pretty powerful, although it’s odd that they would talk about another person and not themselves. We have a couple of essays that talk about the writer him or herself, but these seem kind of unfocused. And then we have ones that talk about the state oft he world; honestly, what can you say about that.
It’s possible that I’m jaded or in a bad mood and that’s why I didn’t appreciate these essays. Or perhaps I’m just facing the futility of things.
This is not to say that I think that writing about 9/11 is easy (you’ll notice I’m not doing it). Indeed, I think talking about it in any kind of meaningful, non-strident, non-cliched way is nigh impossible.
But these writers do give it a try. And I am grateful for that. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: MEGAFAUN-“Get Right” (2011).
I’ve never heard of Megafaun before, but this song is just wonderful. It’s an 8 minute blast of psychedelia that covers and sometimes obscures a beautiful poppy song. I hear overtones of Dinosaur Jr (but more for J. Mascis’ seemingly lazy style than for his crazy guitar riffing) and a bit of the Lemonheads in the folky pop feel. Throw in a dose of My Bloody Valentine for the waves of sound and you get a perfectly lovely track.
