Houston Calling

Explosions In The Sky in Houston?

April 23rd, 2003 · No Comments

Those who go to this show will die, those who go to this show will live forever.

I just heard about this upcoming show, which is at a club down the street from my apartment. Apparently there are only 80 tickets available for the May 17th show, and they are only for sale at a record store which I won’t publish in order to better the odds of my getting at least one ticket before they sell out.

For those unfamiliar with Explosions In The Sky, think Godspeed You! Black Emperor but with a little more personality. Maybe more like Mogwai.

Anyway, you can read a review I wrote for InMyEar a while back about the band below:

Explosions In The Sky

Once in a while you hear a record that screams originality, one that makes you happy that there are still bands slogging it out in dingy bars, traveling in broken-down vans, and working 9-to-5 jobs to earn enough money to afford rehearsal space so they can play together. This week I found another one of these bands–Explosions In The Sky.

I had originally planned to lift some of the information from the Austin, TX-based band’s website because of a very humorous story about the band on a recent trip to Amsterdam but alas, the band seems not to be able to afford a decent web host (that, or they are a lot more popular than I gave them credit for) because their site has exceeded its allowed amount of hits. Regardless, this band’s music is incredible. I have been asked to describe their music and the only explanation I can come up with is “epic.” I get hints of Pink Floyd, but only from the instrumental aspects of the band’s songs. The closest I can come to comparing the band is another relatively unknown, the Canadian band Godspeed You Black Emperor!

Their latest effort, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever, is a 6-song album on Temporary Residence Records filled with some great music. Loud, great music. The label claims the band to be, “equal parts romance and tragedy, their beautiful washes of melody have the tendency to ignite into head-spinning walls of noise. Possibly the loudest live band ever, their sound proves to be every bit as triumphant as their name implies.”

Michael Chamy, of the Austin American-Statesmen, wrote the following of Explosions In The Sky: “This plane will crash tomorrow” states a now-prophetic blurb on the inside album sleeve. “Help us stay alive,” pleads a slogan on the opposite page, underneath the sketch of an angel. Fear, hope, death, redemption…ambitious subjects for any rock band, let alone a local one that utters not a single word. Explosions in the Sky let their music do the talking, and the message comes across loud and clear, soft and subtly, with a tightly focused passion unheard of from a band that uses only guitar, bass, and drums to communicate. The fireworks start right off with “Greet Death,” a blinding flash of glorious guitar squall and crashing cymbals that, at the three-minute mark, fades into the night, replaced by a faint, contemplative melodic residue. These shards deliberately coalesce into an arresting whole, as bright and hopeful as the sunrise. “Yasmin the Light” lays down a pair of simultaneous melodies, one full of promise, one full of anxiety. Suddenly, the anxiety explodes into a fiery cloud of Mogwai-style violence. Just as abruptly, the distortion ceases, and the remaining line emerges with a more cheery tenor. These shifts and curves are the band’s modus operandi, in which every theme is an image and every song a repository of drama as gripping in its intensity as it is friendly in its tuneful progression. Those Who Tell the Truth… reveals scores of hypnotic instro-rock outfits as charlatans, and raises the bar for all musicians by holding expressiveness in its proper esteem, just above elegance.”

J. Ryan Kee of Unpop.com writes, “As an act of pure irony, I suppose, I received this CD in the mail on Monday evening, September 10th (2001). Perhaps it was a premonition, perhaps not. However, it came to be that this record was a soundtrack to the days, and tragic events, that followed.

There has been a lot of hype and press about this band, but you cannot truly understand until you hear them. Rumor has it, that about a year ago, the kids in The American Analog Set sent a live tape of Explosions to Jeremy DeVine of Temporary Residence with a note attached that read ?THIS TOTALLY F***ING DESTROYS!? After listening to it once, just like Jeremy, I couldn’t agree more. Chiming guitars and ethereal drumming leads you up and down and back again, exploding here and there just to see if you were paying attention (there?s a quiz later). The record plays out more like a symphony in six movements, than an album with six songs. These four soft-spoken boys from Texas really know how to shock and amaze and wake you from a dead sleep, only to lullaby you right back into a dream. This record is nothing short of amazing, and like I said, you really can?t know until you hear it for yourself…”

Really, I cannot wait to see them live.

Notable shows this weekend include:

Friday: The New Year, Silkworm, Zykos @ Fat Cat’s
Saturday: The Faint, Les Savy Fav, Schneider TM, DANCEPARC @ Number’s

Now Playing in my iPOD: The Webb Brothers — Maroon

Tags: Music