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- Date Released: February 20, 2007
- Genre: Rock/Pop
- Style: Rock
- Label: Temporary Residence Ltd. / The Orchard
Texan foursome return with further soundtracks to coming-of-age football dramas.
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We Say...
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 “soft.”
In a way, it’s useless to talk about individual tracks from an EITS album — the group famously plays forty-minute live shows with no breaks, constructing new interstitial material to string the songs together each time they perform — but the obvious standout is the 13-minute “It’s Natural to Be Afraid.” Composed of three parts, the song helps properly end the previous track with a somber piano, guitar and noise trio, proffers a classic EITS crescendo in its middle section and ends with a whimpering Ebow-meets-treated-piano coda.
Still all-instrumental, still as emo as anything you’d find on a Fall Out Boy album and still relentlessly lyrical and melodic, All of a Sudden is everything you want in an Explosions in the Sky album. Lucky for us, they’ve given us even more than usual to digest. Treasure it. -
They Say...
There is little middle ground for an instrumental post-rock band like the Austin, TX-based Explosions in the Sky. Endlessly compared to Mogwai -- who can make aggressively angry music when they want to -- this quartet consciously seeks what is meandering and beautiful. If there is a strategy behind their music as revealed by 2001's Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever and 2003's The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, it's that beauty seeks tension to resolve itself and find itself even in seeming chaos. This music featuring layered guitars, piano, bass, and drums begins with melody and more often than not ends with it, no matter how far from the quiet and even halting lyricism the band wandered into at the beginning. Which raises two questions. First, is All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone different from the other pair of records on Temporary Residence? And, of course, since one must confront the seemingly eternal academically trained analysis and cynicism of the indie world, "Is it necessary?" The answer to both questions is "yes." While the surface of Explosions in the Sky's sonic sense of labyrinthine adventure is similar, the manner in which they get to the center of each piece is not. On "The Birth and Death of the Day," which opens the set, violence and noise are threatened from the beginning with distorted chords, feedback, and big crescendos. Space enters before lyricism here, though harmonically everything resonates as one, and for a moment one thinks that this is a forgotten intro to some lost and found U2 song of yore, but they quickly pass that mark and dig inside the chaos for its roots and branches. "It's Natural to Be Afraid" begins with subtle dissonance and the guitars emerging out of quiet chaos with sounds and pianos playing slowly and contrapuntally. It takes over 13 minutes to wind up, down, and around again, but it's an exercise that is rewarding for a patient listener -- or if you simply want to close your eyes and go with it. "So Long, Lonesome," at under four minutes, closes the set. Its piano lines take a front seat as guitars provide counterpoint and a sonic backdrop, and the tension force field never rises above a four. It's almost a chamber piece. Ultimately, there is real growth here, subtle and unpretentious as it is. All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone is another gorgeous exercise by Explosions in the Sky. How can listeners not need more music by a band that seeks beauty over everything else in its subtly expanding sonic universe?
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| 01. |  |
The Birth And Death Of The Day |
7:49 |
|
| 02. | |
Welcome, Ghosts |
5:43 |
|
| 03. | |
It's Natural To Be Afraid |
13:27 |
|
| 04. | |
What Do You Go Home To? |
4:59 |
|
| 05. | |
Catastrophe And The Cure |
7:56 |
|
| 06. | |
So Long, Lonesome |
3:40 |
|
06 Total Tracks, 43:34 Total Length
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Credits
- John Congleton - Engineer // Jeremy DeVine - Layout Design // Esteban Rey - Artwork
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