What’s That in The Sky?

The four-piece instrumental rock band Explosions in the Sky formed in Austin, Texas, in 1999. Three of the members are from Midland, a town near the state’s Western edge. For this band, the sense of place is important. Listeners may find it hard to imagine the fiery blasts of the band’s name allude to brightening anything but the widest and most windswept of horizons. The sound, live and on record, is gargantuan. Texas-sized.Explosions in the Sky’s regional roots factor into its unusual profile. The group began when music supervisor Brian Reitzell, best known for his collaborations with the director Sofia Coppola, contacted the band in 2004 about scoring a film called “Friday Night Lights.” The movie was based on a nonfiction book by H.G. Bissinger about a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, one town over from Midland.Comparing high school football in the South to religion has become a cliché, but suffice it to say, Explosions in the Sky’s alternately reverent and ecstatic music suited the high stakes drama of the film’s subject matter. The soundtrack, which contained new material and tracks from previous records, introduced the band’s distinctive sound to millions of new ears.About that sound: Explosions in the Sky’s music hinges on overlapping guitars — sometimes three at once — that build from lyrical miniatures to epic, wall-of-sound crescendos. The band is the foremost American practitioner of the style. Toronto’s Godspeed You Black Emperor! pioneered the sound, which has roots in the postrock movement of the 1990s. Scotland’s Mogwai and Japan’s Mono are prominent in the same vein.“All of a Sudden, I Miss Everyone” is Explosions in the Sky’s fourth full-length album. As one moves through the band’s discography, it’s easy to understand the most common criticism: Forall the prettiness and ear-frying volume, the songs are ultimately too alike. There are, perhaps, only so manyways one can move from quiet, tinkling strums to ripping power chords. It’s a conundrum every band working in this style must confront eventually.Explosions in the Sky addresses these concerns by incorporating textures on loan from the soundtrack world. “Your Hand in Mine (with Strings)” from “Friday Night Lights” took one of the band’s earlier compositions and sweetened it with strings; similar orchestral turns pop up again here, albeit in a more abrasive form. There’s also more piano.The block piano chords that mark the changes on the tense, brooding “It’s Natural To Be Afraid” are accompanied by a trembling cello, which serves as a delicate counterpoint to the feedback consuming the track during its final section. The tumbling cluster of piano that opens “What Do You Go Home To?” is at first edgy and uncertain, but partway through, the notes congeal into a shimmering mathematical pattern redolent of Philip Glass.There’s a greater sense of patience to these tracks than Explosions in the Sky has displayed before. The huge crash that seems imminent throughout “What Do You Go Home To?,” for example, never arrives. Where the music on this album usually seems to be moving either up or down (usually up), on this album development is more likely to hinge on melody.Indeed, melody emerges as the band’s secret weapon when it stays truest to its established style. What most differentiates Explosions in the Sky from Mono or Mogwai is the strength of its songwriting. The tunes are hummable to say the least, provided you don’t mind humming so loudly your teeth begin to ache.Album opener “The Birth and Death of the Day” is in many ways the quintessential Explosions in the Sky track, with its fanfare of screaming harmonized guitar strums moving further and further up the neck, ratcheting up the tension. Just past the halfway point, the melodramatic ante is upped to absurd levels as the drums swing to double-time martial rolls and the guitars, somehow, go higher still.This sort of peak, the band’s trademark, can sound tremendously exhilarating or pushy and manipulative, depending on one’s tastes or mood. And that seems a fair final assessment of a band with no interest in going halfway. “All of a Sudden, I Miss Everyone” is Explosion in the Sky’s most well rounded and complete album and, for the uninitiated, the perfect starting point. If one moves backward through the group’s albums, its tricks become more apparent and, when taken in high doses, tiresome. With this record considered on its own, however, Explosions in the Sky delivers the sort of outsized triumph promised by its name.

What’s That in The Sky?

What’s That in The Sky?

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