Explosions In The SkyAll of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
Temporary Residence Records
Four albums in, Texas post-rockers Explosions In The Sky are still the undisputed kings of crescendo and quite possibly the least funny band on the planet. That’s not to say the EITS lads themselves are humorless. In fact, they seem to get an inordinate amount of credit for their in-person affability. Their music, however, exists on the furthest fringes of the intensity spectrum, somewhere in the vicinity of Radiohead and about a million miles from, say, They Might Be Giants. To put it another way, if U2 were playing a concert in the Grand Canyon, with The Edge’s guitar swirling in reverb and Bono left uncharacteristically speechless, it might sound a tad like “It’s Natural To Be Afraid,” the third track off of All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone.
Despite a surge in popularity since the release of 2004’s The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place and the subsequent soundtrack to the film Friday Night Lights, Explosions In The Sky show no signs of making any mainstream concessions on their latest release. They still sound a lot like their Scottish big brothers Mogwai, at times, but unlike that band, EITS have shown no interest in dabbling with more traditional song stuctures or pesky lyrics. They know where they excel, and perhaps with the exception of their labelmates in the Japanese band Mono, nobody is doing this type of heavy but luminous, guitar-driven music any better.
(Andrew Clayman)
Published in The Knoxville Voice, March 2007
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