Soundbite: Explosions in the Sky

Explosions in the Sky

“All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone”

Temporary Residence Limited

4 Out of 5 Paws

It’s almost a stab to a band’s purported musical integrity to enumerate the validity of some albums through words alone.

For instance: It’s easy to call Explosions in the Sky a post-rock band. It’s even easier to compare them with Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Mogwai, bands which often take approaches that seem all-but-cerebral.

But EITS’s newest release, “All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone,” is perhaps the album which sets those issues aside. It offers the same musical eargasms that the group’s previous five albums provide (a result of their labyrinthine song structures, guitar tension-escalation-resolution, and military snare motifs), except now they’ve gained a visceral energy that may even get fans to stop comparing the album to its antecedents.

The album opens with a tempestuous crash of distortion in “The Birth and Death of the Day,” taking a self-aware Wagnerian notion of “beginnings” into opposition as it upwells into a sphere of harmonic unison on all instrumental counts.

After the elemental crux midway through “Welcome, Ghosts,” the track segues into the subtly dissonant guitars of “It’s Natural To Be Afraid,” a 13-minute opus which requires patience from the listener as it plateaus and resolves.

As such, each track reaches its focal point with a sense of profound demand, offering a feeling of engagement refreshingly different from previous albums.

“All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone” is the album that finally integrates the explosive live energy of the band into recording. Instead of a vain, mathematical approach, there is a certain maturity which doesn’t ask to be understood but simply bears itself outward for the taking.

E-mail Kalenderian at tkalenderian@media.ucla.edu.

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