eMusic Review
While Explosions in the Sky does notoriously work very slowly (they scrapped six months 'worth of songs before going into the studio for All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone), they were busy in the four years since 2003's The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place. In 2004 they wrote and recorded music for the movie Friday Night Lights and toured much of the year; in 2005 they went into the studio for a few weeks to record their entry in Temporary Residence's excellent Travels in Constants series.
Perhaps because Explosions were so busy, All of a Sudden isn't the reinvention of the post-rock wheel that some of the band's fans had hoped for. (The group's major new wrinkle here is the addition of a piano.) But it is more complex, a welcome change from the set-’em-up, knock-’em-down affairs that have made previous EITS albums exercises in diminishing returns. Here, the songs meander, moving through myriad parts on their way to their inevitable, um, explosions instead of crudely going for the jugular. In so doing, they set themselves apart from a rapidly growing subgenre of Godspeed You! Black Emperor devotees whose imaginations begin and end with “loud” and… read more »
