I’m not one to fanboy hard, but the masters are back.
The gospel of indie rock and if you want to be super-specific, post-rock, was engraved in stone by Montreal’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor over the course of multiple records, beginning in the late 90′s.
Sigur Ros, Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky. All these bands and countless other owe a massive debt to the strings, distortion and sense of dynamics that Godspeed first developed.
But after eight years of radio silence, the questions remains. Do they still have it? After all this time, what will their first North American performance in all these years hold?
Three guitar, two bassists, two percussionists and a violin means that the full spectrum dynamics are there. The drones, the feedback, the samples, it’s all their there. It’s not your mom’s Godspeed, or at least, the Godspeed of say the year 2000 that almost got arrested. It’s a slower, leaner but definitely meaner Godspeed. “BBF” still ruins the heart, “Storm” stills raises the soul and you’re pretty sure to still get funky, if GYBE can get funky, with “Albanian.”
Some people tend to crap out after this kind of layoff, they didn’t.