Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Yanqui U.X.O
Released 4th November 2002 UK, 11th November 2002 North America
1. 09-15-00
2. Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls
3. Motherfucker=redeemer
=====
Anyone familiar to Godspeed You Black Emperor will know what they're about, 'arty' instrumental alternative-rock is probably the most fitting description you can give the band. From one record to the next they become more and more pretentious and outspoken about their political beliefs and ideas, whether or not you agreed with the GYBE message the music was always absolutely fantastic. Until now.
Those of you who know nothing about this band, they are a Canadian 9-piece outfit who make what I like to call "movie music", that is music similar to the orchestrated compositions you would find on original movie scores. The kind of music that plays in the background as the main hero saves the day, or as the evil guy kills the good guys best friend; powerful music which is capable of getting to you emotionally. At least, that was in the case in their three previous efforts...
This is by no means a bad album, it's just not a brilliant one either. With each song clocking over 20 minutes and the final track coming in at 31 minutes, this will definitely not be to everyones taste, but in previous releases "f#a#oo" and the "Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada" EP in which the band adopted a similar tactic, the compositions were so good it didn't really matter that this was essentially 4 or 5 songs bundled into one convenient package - they were varied enough to keep you interested for the whole song.
[p][/p]But everything that made the band so mind numbingly brilliant then has gone: the emotionally charged music which built up slowly to the brilliant crescendo, the little snippets of documentaries and talking which definitely helped set the mood and the sharpness of the sound where you could hear every instrument clearly and beautifully. Now the music seems to build up very slowly and amount to nothing, any trace of talking is gone and you can barely tell any of the background instruments apart - it often sounds like a mush of sound instead of 9 seperate instruments playing. Basically anything any critic ever badmouthed the band about has been changed, the crescendos of f#a#oo were labelled predictable and repetitive and the documentative snippets dubbed "annoying" so GYBE in their infinite wisdom decided to try and adapt their sound to suit these people who just didn't like the music and left fans of the original material scratching our heads as to why.
As said before, the album itself could not be construed as bad by any stretch of the imagination and chances are that if you haven't heard any of the bands previous albums that you will find this to be very good. But any fan of f#a#oo, Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada and especially those who prefer Lift Your Skinny Fists.. to the previous two records will find this album to be a huge dissapointment.
The first track "09-15-00" is a very repetitive song which blatantly repeats the same bland noise for 6 minutes before it begins to get interesting, the next 4 or 5 minutes of the song show that they do still have the ability to produce great music and that the quality of the album may not necessarily be the fault of the band..more of the producer and mixer. All in all, it's a very dull effort which amounts to nothing more than nice background music.
"Rockets on Rocket Falls" is far better and almost a return to the GYBE of old, although once again the same piece of music is repeated over and over for far too long, I definitely got the impression that if they had made each song a bit shorter they really could have made an extrordinary album. Despite the flaws and often blandness of the songs as a whole, they each have their own pieces of genius which will appeal to new and old fans and do make the album worthwhile. My main gripe with this song was it constantly threatened to burst into action and give the album a much needed sense of energy. Eventually it does get going but only after 16 minutes, and the end result is not worth the wait, although it once again shows that given better mixing and production this could have been an asbolutely outstanding album.
The next song falls into the repetitive trap that the earlier two also experienced, but it's without a doubt the saving grace of the album. It's very unlike any GYBE song I've ever heard, fast and chirpy guitar riff accompanies a fast drum beat into a climax of sorts and then it slowly unwinds into the same problems the rest of the album suffers from. It becomes bland and repetitive for almost 10 minutes before finally waking up again with a catchy riff and finally some emotion being put into it, this is around 10 minutes too long at least and the point of if they had condensed the same material into a smaller time scale, it would have had a much greater effect as a whole.
Maybe it's because the first three Godspeed You Black Emperor records were so breathtakingly original and brilliant, or maybe it's the fact that they have spawned three equally brilliant side projects and have exhausted their creativity but this album is a huge dissapointment. At it's best, this is a fantastic album which eclipses anything they've ever done but at it's worst it's boring, repetitive and bland. Each song falls into the problem of being long for the sake of it, and not long because they have so many ideas and compositions they want to express. To conclude, by another artist this wouldn't have been such a negative review, and bare in mind that I'm expressing my dissapointment of this album and it would have been a great deal more positive if my expectations had not been so high.
Rating: 5.5/10
Yanqui U.X.O
Released 4th November 2002 UK, 11th November 2002 North America
1. 09-15-00
2. Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls
3. Motherfucker=redeemer
=====
Anyone familiar to Godspeed You Black Emperor will know what they're about, 'arty' instrumental alternative-rock is probably the most fitting description you can give the band. From one record to the next they become more and more pretentious and outspoken about their political beliefs and ideas, whether or not you agreed with the GYBE message the music was always absolutely fantastic. Until now.
Those of you who know nothing about this band, they are a Canadian 9-piece outfit who make what I like to call "movie music", that is music similar to the orchestrated compositions you would find on original movie scores. The kind of music that plays in the background as the main hero saves the day, or as the evil guy kills the good guys best friend; powerful music which is capable of getting to you emotionally. At least, that was in the case in their three previous efforts...
This is by no means a bad album, it's just not a brilliant one either. With each song clocking over 20 minutes and the final track coming in at 31 minutes, this will definitely not be to everyones taste, but in previous releases "f#a#oo" and the "Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada" EP in which the band adopted a similar tactic, the compositions were so good it didn't really matter that this was essentially 4 or 5 songs bundled into one convenient package - they were varied enough to keep you interested for the whole song.
[p][/p]But everything that made the band so mind numbingly brilliant then has gone: the emotionally charged music which built up slowly to the brilliant crescendo, the little snippets of documentaries and talking which definitely helped set the mood and the sharpness of the sound where you could hear every instrument clearly and beautifully. Now the music seems to build up very slowly and amount to nothing, any trace of talking is gone and you can barely tell any of the background instruments apart - it often sounds like a mush of sound instead of 9 seperate instruments playing. Basically anything any critic ever badmouthed the band about has been changed, the crescendos of f#a#oo were labelled predictable and repetitive and the documentative snippets dubbed "annoying" so GYBE in their infinite wisdom decided to try and adapt their sound to suit these people who just didn't like the music and left fans of the original material scratching our heads as to why.
As said before, the album itself could not be construed as bad by any stretch of the imagination and chances are that if you haven't heard any of the bands previous albums that you will find this to be very good. But any fan of f#a#oo, Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada and especially those who prefer Lift Your Skinny Fists.. to the previous two records will find this album to be a huge dissapointment.
The first track "09-15-00" is a very repetitive song which blatantly repeats the same bland noise for 6 minutes before it begins to get interesting, the next 4 or 5 minutes of the song show that they do still have the ability to produce great music and that the quality of the album may not necessarily be the fault of the band..more of the producer and mixer. All in all, it's a very dull effort which amounts to nothing more than nice background music.
"Rockets on Rocket Falls" is far better and almost a return to the GYBE of old, although once again the same piece of music is repeated over and over for far too long, I definitely got the impression that if they had made each song a bit shorter they really could have made an extrordinary album. Despite the flaws and often blandness of the songs as a whole, they each have their own pieces of genius which will appeal to new and old fans and do make the album worthwhile. My main gripe with this song was it constantly threatened to burst into action and give the album a much needed sense of energy. Eventually it does get going but only after 16 minutes, and the end result is not worth the wait, although it once again shows that given better mixing and production this could have been an asbolutely outstanding album.
The next song falls into the repetitive trap that the earlier two also experienced, but it's without a doubt the saving grace of the album. It's very unlike any GYBE song I've ever heard, fast and chirpy guitar riff accompanies a fast drum beat into a climax of sorts and then it slowly unwinds into the same problems the rest of the album suffers from. It becomes bland and repetitive for almost 10 minutes before finally waking up again with a catchy riff and finally some emotion being put into it, this is around 10 minutes too long at least and the point of if they had condensed the same material into a smaller time scale, it would have had a much greater effect as a whole.
Maybe it's because the first three Godspeed You Black Emperor records were so breathtakingly original and brilliant, or maybe it's the fact that they have spawned three equally brilliant side projects and have exhausted their creativity but this album is a huge dissapointment. At it's best, this is a fantastic album which eclipses anything they've ever done but at it's worst it's boring, repetitive and bland. Each song falls into the problem of being long for the sake of it, and not long because they have so many ideas and compositions they want to express. To conclude, by another artist this wouldn't have been such a negative review, and bare in mind that I'm expressing my dissapointment of this album and it would have been a great deal more positive if my expectations had not been so high.
Rating: 5.5/10
