Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven
(Kranky)
This is sure to be one more review lost in the sea of a million reviews of
the new Godspeed You Black Emperor! record, and it's curious to do both this
and the new Radiohead album for the same fakejazz issue. This
is a huge deal--it is almost too much to tackle in one review. The
expectations for this album taint my review, as objective as I try to be.
The song titles are long; actually, the songs are broken into parts but it's
confusing to me so I'm going to drop them (the titles are too long anyway)
and just work with what I hear. This double-disc set proves to be pretty
daunting, so let's move through this as methodically as possible.
- Disc one number one, pretty slow actually, where I'm turning up my stereo
at first .. ah, there it is. This is pretty slow--oh wait, this is
Godspeed You Black Emperor!, so all of the songs are going to be 20+ minutes
long. Nice ambient textures here and there. Oh, here comes the build.
And what a build it is, the chordal progression being remarkable different
from their other songs (which start to sound the same, eh?). There's some
horns! This is nice, triumphant and sorta like a cross between Mussorgsky
and the first track on Gastr Del Sol's Upgrade and Afterlife. And
at six minutes, it's out, cut out, and we're left with some ringing guitars.
Here comes the "slow build," I bet, and I'm right. 10 minutes, cue the
drums. 12 minutes in, and the drums are out, and some machinery sounds or
something are in. This is dark; this is brooding. I rather like it. It's
intense. Here comes a build ... cymbals crashing in the background... I
bet it's going to just start rocking out in a minute ... but no, it's a
bass interlude of sorts. This is different, a deviation from what I
expected. They're holding it out, some nice chiming. There must be a
million different instruments in this song. The rhythms go crazy and
sputter to a stop, 17 minutes in and everything completely stops. There's
still 5 minutes left in the track, so who wants to bet that it's time for
some musique concrete? Yep, we got a recording of a voice at a supermarket
or something. A commentary on the modern life? I dunno, but it melds into
some scraping noises, another rambling, unintelligible male voice, and some
piano chords that sound like glaciers. And you know what? It's fucking
nice, and then the track ends.
- Disc one number two - starts off fantastically--dark tape manipulations
and electronic sounds bringing out an environment that fits into their
bleakness; the voice comes in and throws out the religious imagery and
poetic sayings while the strings twirl around. I like this actually--it's
clearly a retreading of the B-side to their last EP but it doesn't last too
long (for their terms), turning quickly into a faux-ethnicy piece that
builds up with some xylophone or glockenspiel or vibes or something. I'm
really digging on the way this record flows together, sorta like Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle except not at all, and the songs on here are pretty
tightly composed. 11 and a half minutes in, and we're rocking. This turns
into what is probably the low point of the disc so far for me, a slow
plodding song (I guess it's "World Police and Friendly Fires") that (of
course) goes into the build. Godspeed You Black Emperor! tread soundtrack
ground that falls into that rock build just a bit too much. This song
accelerates and you know what's coming. This part has some weird screaming
sounds, like sine tones or just a string section freaking out before
cutting out suddenly and buzzing. An intense drone that actually starts
to hurt my ears (!) but maybe it's 'cause I have the volume so loud and I'm
totally immersing myself in this. The last part of the suite (I believe
it's called "The Buildings They are Sleeping Now") is priceless--a stark
soundscape sucking me inside a canyon. Approaching industrial territory,
the track (and the first disc) fades out like a Pelt outtake.
It's time to take a break for some Kool-Aid!
- Disc two, number one! And a voice starts us off with some reminiscing
about Coney Island. It's not too remarkable, but it's bleak. I've just
realized that GYBE's main interest in "musique concrete" is integrating
monologues into their music ... and while it worked well on "Dead Flag
Blues" and was done rather differently on the brilliant "BBF3," I didn't
think it was a trick they would keep repeating. It's really not that
interesting here, but oops, it has stopped already for some ascending strings,
and this couldn't be more formulaic, but my friend Karthik said that disc
2 was the more interesting so this better be going somewhere, and now I'll
shut up and listen. But no, it's following the formula of a Godspeed You
Black Emperor! song exactly--the string introduction, followed by guitars
chiming in and slowly rising percussion. It's the more Morricone-sounding
GYBE sound. Seven minutes in, and whoa, it's indie-rock! The Slint
influence is rearing it's head. A build, the progression repeats, the beat
is steady, and I'm actually air-drumming along with it (!) for some
reason. Then it gets real Knight Rider sounding, sorta, and a screaming
melody sings over a drumroll that's actually peppy, and fucking-A,
it's Godspeed You Black Emperor! still (and I hate the way my word processor
keeps capitalizing the next word after I hit the exclamation point, each
time I have to go back and change it and I swear that I'm going to disable
that feature) and while I was typing that everything faded out except the
screaming melody, and it's damn great, this is what the first sentence in
Gravity's Rainbow surely sounded like! Some atonal guitar clatterings,
but oh, they're gone, and 14 minutes have elapsed, we are still listening
to Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven, and that whole
song was great but nothing new at all really. Some nice chimey parts to
introduce the next movement, CRASH there it is sixteen minutes into this
piece, and it sounds like the horns are here again (but this is a good thing,
methinks) and it gets quite and they show that they can be pretty delicate,
and a hip-hop beat comes in and they play over it, and I can't help but
think how great it would be if Young MC came on and busted some rhymes and
wow.... and we pull it out over this hip-hop beat and it sorta reminds me
of a song my old band did, and the guitars sound like warm jets at 20
minutes, unless those are processed strings, and it goes and goes and it's
pretty good. It ends on this up note, and a second drummer I think is
adding some percussion and it's pretty funky and fresh and a nice new
direction that really saves the song (which, if you can remember way back
to the beginning, started like every previous Godspeed You Black Emperor!
song). It ends, and did this have anything to do with Coney Island?
- Disc two number two, the title track sorta, and we open with what sounds
like a field recording of some campfire ditty, a strummed acoustic guitar
and lyrics in a goofy Americana voice and everything, and some weird
ambience just overtook it, and wow--that was really awesome! It's a sharp
contrast to the previous sounds, and we're only 2 minutes into the track
now (but that's okay, cause this is the short one!). Weird childrens voices
and strange chimes blend together, and they're all yapping in French or
Quebecois or something, and they fade out and an INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL PART
comes in and I'm going to stop typing cause I can't hear over the keyboard.
It explodes into what it probably the "poppiest" I've ever heard this band.
This part sounds sort of Hawaiian. But not for too long. The cold sounds
of Canada (I guess) are next, and this song is pretty fruity but so far
it's been fantastic. A long quiet part builds into another rock part that
is good, I guess, but after so many of these across the past three sides
this one is unremarkable. Quiet ambience ... and really good murmuring
nostalgia here. The track gets rather shimmery and spacey, floating along
for a few minutes. The build is there, but it's all done within the
dynamics of the shimmery guitars or whatever they are. And it's gone, but
no .. the last two minutes of the track consists of slow, reverb-drenched
guitars (again, I think it's a guitar) and some metallic sounds, and a
theme comes out, and it's very mellow and quiet and beautiful, and it's a
great way to close the album.
After the second listen (I'll spare you the notes) I'm convinced that
Godspeed You Black Emperor! have created a remarkable record. Of course, it
has its flaws. It is too long--a lot of stuff feels like it could have
been excised. The different pieces of each track do not always clearly
relate to each other--not that they have to--but I wonder why they
presented it as these suites, instead of individual tracks. A lot of the
rock parts are pretty similar track to track, and some parts of the record
could almost be mixed and matched.
As a suite, the fourth track really jumps out as the most challenging and
progressive piece, though it still fits into their agenda. The problem
with these long structures is that each track contains great and mediocre
pieces. Lots of this record feels like a cliché, but "Antennas to
Heaven" keeps it's head above that.
This record is constructed very artistically--the pretentiousness doesn't
bother me (though it's easy to make fun of them for that )--and they really
seem to be doing the right thing. This record offers 90 minutes of a very
focused musical outlook, and an incredible blending of influences--rock
and post-punk, 20th century classical, musique concrete, folk, and ethnic
music--all combined in the most baroque but tasteful way.
This band has come a long way since I saw their first show in the US (May
1998) to the creation of this record. It's a very demanding record to
listen to. I've listened to it three times, and I've felt exhausted each
time. As long as they don't wear out their welcome, this band could be a
lot huger than anything that has come around in years.
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