A little known fact: redundancy is the cornerstone of the written word. The whole nature of conveying information is often a restrained process of hearing information you already know and acting oblivious, all in favor of maintaining the status quo and upholding the social contract.
So sit back and smile while I tell you not about some new piece of art on the horizon, or on television right now. The last time this band was featured in a release was 2002, heralding Danny Boyle’s zombie apocalypse in “28 Days Later.” Of course I’m talking about Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the Montreal-based collective whose particular version of post-rock combines the bleakest corners of the human mind and heart with every reason for redemption imaginable. They are perhaps the most terrifying, glorious band I have ever heard and in the last few weeks of scouring the local zip code for gainful employment, their music has provided grandeur to even the most mundane moments and at times provided a life-line when the meat hook realities lead to some pretty dark turns.
Imagine if Ennio Morricone fronted an instrument nontet in the year 3000. For all five of you who haven’t heard the band’s two landmark full-lengths, “F# A# ∞” and “Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven” (and their divisive third LP “Yanqui U.X.O.”), Godspeed is easily one of the most hipster-baiting groups of the ’90s and early 2000s. Like trying to describe religious experience to an atheist, it can be easy to dismiss the subtle soft-loud-soft-fade dynamics of Godspeed as overlong or indigestible, somehow not transitive outside of some social circles. There are, however, few moments in recorded music as triumphant as when the entrance of the martial drums in the “Lift Yr. Skinny Fist Like Antennas to Heaven” movement of “Storm,” or the brutal breakneck crescendo of “The Sad Mafioso” in “East Hastings,” the track condensed to 4:09 in “28 Days Later.” As much as a band like The Flaming Lips can be life-affirming in their live shows, Godspeed’s records, which consist of several minisymphonies of many individual movements, open your eyes to the beauty just below the ugliness of Western society and force you to face fear in order to emerge from darkness into a “bleak, uncertain, beautiful” new world.
Of course gushing like that isn’t likely to convert any skeptics, but when you boil it down different people look for a variety of means to feel fulfilled. Some live on the fringe and skirt danger, some spend a lot of money, and still others strap on a pair of headphones and tune in for an hour or so to receive a strange transmission from a speculative future now past and yet to come.
From the sustained F# drone at the beginning of “The Dead Flag Blues,” a bass hum like the voice of the “horrible machine” described a few moments later, to the loop of George W. Bush at the end of “Tiny Silver Hammers,” the combined 262 minutes and 12 seconds of Godspeed’s output could very well be the only music you need in your life. Then again, that kind of tunnel vision (or hearing, as it were), could lead to a more radical form of the apathy the band has squalled against for the last two decades. For my money, though, the emotional resonance of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s musical forays with their spoken word narrations of street preachers and inmates speak much louder than most performers who sing.
