Familiarize yourself with the graphic above, because it's going to be the cover art for what is likely to be the best album of 2007. I mean, it's entirely possible that it might not be, but Explosions in the Sky have never let me down before and I don't expect them to anytime soon. All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone will mark the fourth full-length by the band, the follow-up to 2003's The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, which is their best record to date, in my opinion. It's pretty hard not to have my expectations through the roof for this album, but I'm trying my best to keep them under control so when I finally hear it I'll be blown away.
The new album will be released with a limited edition bonus disc of remixes by the likes of Four Tet, Eluvium, The Paper Chase, and more. It will be out February 21st in double disc CD format as well as beautiful double gatefold LP, with an etching on the fourth side. The first 2,000 copies will be colored vinyl, and all of the first pressing (5,000 copies) will come with the remix CD. The new record will be available at both NY shows this coming February, so if you want it a few days early, you better make sure you get tickets.
The Birth And Death Of The Day (Jesu Mix) (9:48)
Producer [Additional] - Justin K. Broadrick*
Remix - Jesu
Remix [Credited To] - Justin K. Broadrick*
Welcome, Ghosts (Adem Mix) (6:24)
Producer [Additional] - Adem Ilhan
Remix - Adem (2)
Remix [Credited To] - Adem Ilhan
It's Natural To Be Afraid (The Paper Chase Mix) (6:53)
Producer [Additional] - Chris Godbey , John Congleton
Remix - Paper Chase, The
Remix [Credited To] - Chris Godbey , John Congleton
What Do You Go Home To? (Mountains Mix) (10:23)
Producer [Additional] - Mountains
Remix - Mountains
Catastrophe And The Cure (Four Tet Mix) (8:33)
Producer [Additional] - Kieran Hebden
Remix - Four Tet
Remix [Credited To] - Kieran Hebden
So Long, Lonesome (Eluvium Mix) (5:40)
Producer [Additional] - Matthew Cooper
Remix - Eluvium
Remix [Credited To] - Matthew Cooper
Sometimes Explosions in the Sky start with a whisper and end with a scream, but on "Birth and Death of the Day", they begin with a scream and proceed into a symphonic odyssey that Aaron Copland might have composed if he'd played electric guitar. Like Copland, EITS are cinematic, but with more kinetic drive than any film--except maybe Koyaanisqatsi--could match. Compositions like "It's Natural to Be Afraid" take you on epic journeys that roar like a Harley Davidson one minute and slip into taut contemplation the next, using the slow-tension build that EITS have perfected. All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone was produced by John Congleton, who has worked with lo-fi groups like the Roots and the Mountain Goats. That might explain why the album lacks the atmosphere of EITS's monumental The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place and their Friday Night Lights soundtrack. Instead, they rely even more on the arc of their compositions and the integral twin lead guitar lines that never solo but always drive the songs. They can shift from power-chord aggression to the sound of plucked mandolins in an instant. This is progressive rock for people who weren't even born when prog reigned supreme. It's the sound of King Crimson, transmuted through punk and grunge aesthetics. --John Diliberto
Review by Thom Jurek
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?
Explosions in the Sky
All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
[Temporary Residence; 2007]
Rating: 6.0
While alphabetized post-rock record collections find Explosions in the Sky slotted neatly between Do Make Say Think and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and although the music is suited to the same contemplative mood, these Texans are more workmanlike than their Canadian peers, more like artisans than artists. The aforementioned post-rock ensembles like to tinker with musical narrative like the post-modernists they are, and for every bold crescendo, an incongruous tangent can disrupt the music's linearity. But EITS works with classical narrative arcs-- tension and release, conflict and resolution, fatigue and redemption-- producing records that provoke both the satisfaction and the ennui that attend their time-honed methods.
All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone is no exception, trafficking in the obvious and preordained. As always, elongated guitar shapes contort through various stages of dim shimmer and blinding incandescence. As always, you could fit the esoteric instrumentation through the eye of a needle. As always, the action unfolds with the adrenaline-rationing precision of a big-budget action flick, with climaxes that feel at once thrilling and safe, constrained by the four borders of a figurative screen.
It would be pointless to discuss this album on a song-by-song basis, since each funnels different permutations of chords and changes into the same inflexible template. It would be like trying to describe Legos by talking about helicopters and fortresses instead of brightly colored blocks of interlocking plastic. So let's consider the template itself. The foundation of EITS's aesthetic is the marriage of raw power and delicate beauty, and they've definitely honed the formula to weapon-caliber impact. The quiet parts, dominated by trembling strands of silvery guitar, are unaccountably tense, while the screaming guitar meltdowns they always lead to retain a pleasant lullaby quality, so that each mode holds the other in balanced suspension. There are the inevitable moments when one guitar breaks free from the others to slam home a more direct version of the song's melodic theme, and the climactic freakouts that inevitably signal the song's impending deconstruction.
What EITS essentially does is to write indie rock choruses and stretch them into long instrumentals, circling around a simple yet obscured central melody until they close in on it with predictable impact, all in a blatantly telegraphed soft/loud dynamic. All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone is the musical equivalent of a late Woody Allen film (possibly a good or bad thing, depending on your temperament): The action unfolds predictably, but the dramatic effect can also be increased by your fondness for and familiarity with the idiom.
-Brian Howe, February 19, 2007
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