Play Explosions for your next road trip
Published Feb. 16, 2007
A friend once said that Explosions in the Sky is the ideal band to listen to while on road trips across expansive Texan highways. The Austin-based band's dramatic albums serve as great backdrops for long stretches of road.
Explosions in the Sky's latest, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, without a doubt takes things to another level. The addition of piano to some songs contributes an otherworldly feel to the album. The heaviest parts are heavier than before, the softer parts gentler than ever. Even without lyrics, Explosions in the Sky is capable of conveying the most complex of emotions and creating surreal atmospheres.
From the opening crunch of "The Birth and Death of the Day" to the unexpected piano-driven closer "So Long, Lonesome," All of a Sudden is classic Explosions: melodramatic, but not overly so and thrilling yet peaceful.
The more-than-13-minute mammoth of a song "It's Natural to Be Afraid" features the most intense of any Explosions climaxes to date. Building from an intro heavy in guitar feedback, the song twinkles teasingly with the twin-guitar play of Mark Smith and Munaf Rayani until it bursts with nonstop tremolo picking and Christopher Hrasky's circular drumming. Listening to this ending is like watching a World War II movie: plenty of chaos, but behind it all remains a carefully pieced work of epic proportions — passionate, overwhelming and instantly captivating.
Overall album cohesiveness seems to have taken a backseat to a desire to make each song as mind-blowing and unique as possible. 2001's Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever and 2003's The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place might have been unified wholes, but songs almost overlapped too much at times. All of a Sudden eliminates the repetition in favor of six well-crafted and unique songs. "Catastrophe and the Cure" blends into disorder many times over. "What Do You Go Home To?" sticks out for its moodiness, complete with whining guitar feedback, sleigh bells and piano echoes. This diversity is what keeps the album so interesting.
Explosions might be best known for its more intense pieces, but "So Long, Lonesome" sounds just as passionate, even though it's built around a simple piano melody and picks up very late into the song. Loud or quiet, Explosions in the Sky demands attention.
Although my friend might have been right about the sense of complacency listening to Explosions in the Sky while road tripping brings, the bigger picture lies in the band's ability to encapsulate true human emotion so perfectly in each song. When you listen to Explosions, you hear struggle and eventually experience hope. It doesn't really matter what the situation is when you're listening to Explosions because it's both soothing and exciting, something only Explosions in the Sky manages to pull off so well and proven with All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone.
