Post-rockers don't talk. They don't write lyrics, and they sure as shit don't sing. They name their songs in eight words or more, or don't name them at all, as if to obfuscate any radio DJ who would dare play them or short-circuit the Billboard charts that wouldn't have them anyway. They recognize "drone" as a genre of music, and sound like chamber orchestras that opened their viola cases to discover electric guitars instead. They think 15 minutes is a good length for a song.
301 S. Garey Ave.
Pomona, CA 91766
Category: Music Venues
Region: Out of Town
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None of this helps to explain the fact that Montreal's Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a post-rock archetype if there ever was one, almost immediately sold out its Wednesday-night show at the Music Box in Hollywood. Or that tickets to Sunday's San Francisco gig hit $306 apiece via one aftermarket-seats site before disappearing entirely. It's been happening all over North America, actually: Vancouver, New York, Nashville (yup, Nashville), Chicago. Five months in advance in some cases.
"Apparently GY!BE has underestimated their fan base," wrote one fan on the blog Consequence of Sound in response to the back-to-back news of the tour announcement and its selling out last September. "[They] left a lot of us out in the cold. I've been looking forward to this tour since I heard the rumors around April." In December, user Aaron commented, "Athens, GA, sold out FAST. Please add another date. Some @$$hole is selling tix on stubhub for $399/ea." Commenter Edawg echoed the sentiment: "Disgruntled, bitter and perplexed big-time fan here in Seattle begging you guys to add more shows, please."
But Godspeed shouldn't be faulted for selling themselves short, or upgrading to less cozy venues, as they eventually did in Seattle. We're mere months removed from one of the most cancellation-fraught tour seasons in history, when names as huge as U2, Christina Aguilera, Limp Bizkit and Simon & Garfunkel fell victim to what resembled a pop-tour bloodbath. Yet, here's an experimental octet that hasn't released any new material in nearly a decade, flouting all of that.
Local promoter Sean Carlson (who is bringing them to Fox Theater in Pomona for a warm-up, pre–Music Box gig on Tuesday) doesn't have a solid answer for the obvious question: Why now?
"I'm a huge fan," says FYF main man Carlson. "I guess it's just that good music doesn't age. Or that their music aged well. Godspeed still moves me every time I listen to them. Their songs are timeless. They broke genres. They're a punk band that plays beautiful music."
All of which is true, of course.
The group has released a precious three full-length studio albums, but the last two are gilded classics. Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! was a double-disc epic divided into four 20-minute tracks. Allmusic.com called it "a windfall for any fan of ambient pop, orchestral rock [or] space rock ... who understands how powerful love, melancholy and frustration can be." The 2002 follow-up, Yanqui U.X.O., produced by Steve Albini, fared little worse, but the band declared an indefinite hiatus shortly after its release.
Members of Godspeed went on to other projects — Silver Mt. Zion, Fly Pan Am and Set Fire to Flames, to name some — all well regarded but none captivating fans and critics, as their former group consistently did. Since, younger music aficionados have been able to trace the lineage to the source, or skip directly back to the font via contemporary praise. Pitchfork, for instance, ranked Fists the 65th greatest album of the 2000s. Beck's Sea Change was No. 82.
So maybe it's a lot of anticipation. Or maybe it's something else. There's a YouTube clip slowly picking up steam. It's called "Glennspeed You! Beck Emperor," and in it, Fox News demagogue Glenn Beck blathers on about how the popular upheavals in Egypt and Tunisia spell out the free world's damnation. He points at those famous blackboards, running back and forth across the studio in mock frenzy, pausing to punctuate his points with a steely glare into the camera."The whole world starts to implode," he says.
A clever YouTube citizen has dubbed the old Godspeed song "Moya" over the Fox footage, and (in a better-edited version of the video mash-up) the dooming string section rolls back for this moment, leaving only spare, sad guitar to accompany the words of the right-wing loon: "And what do we do? This is not happenstance. This is not poor people mad at rich people. This is coordinated."
"Glennspeed" is a way hipper version of the old "Let's play Dark Side of the Moon over The Wizard of Oz" meme but one that also raises an unexpected concern. Is there such a thing as musical fearmongering? Are we drawn to Godspeed and their brethren — Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós — for the same reason millions of Americans tune in to Glenn Beck's show night after night? These bands take us right up to the edge, brazenly and beautifully pulling at our emotions, making us feel like every second spent with them is the last we'll ever experience.
Hardscrabble times call for appropriate theme music, and Godspeed's specialty has always been a dark and vivid intensity that communicates more through its downturned melodies and sweeping gestures than most lyricists could hope to in a thousand poems. By replicating doom in a sonic lab, they position themselves to become the only blanket that protects us from the cold.
You don't have to really look far if you love kids. Babysitting is one of the favorite and easy to do jobs around. You can also seek out organizations which are into what you're into. Like museums, if you are into the arts, you can try out becoming a tour guide. If you have an advocacy, you can try charitable institutions and offer your skills in maybe, data encoding or a gofer. The hospitals are also a venue where you can be a candy striper.
Given the sorry state of music of late, post rock might knock it out its tar pit of extinction. with 15 minute songs, the listeners are force to expand their collective attention spans. In my day, Robin Trower- Bridge of Sighs, crossed that lack. It wasn't especially listener friendly, in that Taylor Swift Romeo and Juliet sort of way. You had to listen for at least three minutes, without glazing over, as a stoned mule, and then sing it back.
Angela Garcia as NeonMosfet
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