Title: Lift your skinny fists like antennas to Heaven
Artiste: Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Genre: Post-rock
Familiarity: Zero
Track 1(Love) I'm a little confused, as it shows a total of 19 tracks on Wiki, but Spotify have four! I read that it's like four movements in all, so maybe they all run together? Either way, it's long! A total of abut 85 minutes altogether, whatever way you slice it. The good news is I love this from the off; whether it stays like this or not is another thing but this is beautiful. I'm going to try treating it as split up tracks
a la Wiki, as it will be easier than dealing with four twenty-minute-plus pieces of music. I honestly can't express how gorgeous and epic this is. I hope it doesn't change too much over the course of the album.
Track 2(Love) Smoothly segueing into the second track now, more ambient and with no percussion at this point. Beautiful acoustic guitar coming in. This runs for over eleven minutes, so, you know, we'll see, but at the moment just tremendous. Violin and cello? Oh. Wow. And now serious percussion. Epic to the max. I love this. It's just getting better and better. As everything comes to a gradual halt like a train pulling into a station we're into the very short
Track 3(Hate) Nah, just taped dialogue. Don't like this but it's only just over a minute.
Track 4(Love) Ah, here we go. The talk continues but now there's a lovely lonely piano over it. Really melancholy.
Track 5(Love) Okay, so now we're onto I guess the second movement. This is broken up into much shorter pieces mostly. The first has some nice feedback and dark synth
Track 6(Love) Although this is again mostly just ambient noises I like it better than track 3. Good bassline.
Track 7(Love) Starts with a crying violin: how could I not love this? The religious rhetoric is a bit annoying but it doesn't ruin the track.
Track 8(Love) More cellos and violins; just lovely. Some powerful wailing guitar too. Love the way it speeds up madly as it gets towards the end.
Track 9(Love) This is pretty ambient, almost abstract. Love it. On to movement three then.
Track 10(Love) It's just someone recounting their memories of a place I've never been, but somehow yeah, I like it.
Track 11(Love) Low, gentle guitar intro then rising violin opening a twelve-minute track which between it and the last one takes up more or less the whole movement. Rolling percussion adds some drama but it's still quite low-key but then it picks up intensity and it gets quite Pink Floydy really. This is beyond gorgeous. Now it's picking up speed but not losing any of its beauty. Incredible.
Track 12(Love) Slowing right down now with I think just guitar and bass, then some sort of bells, vibes or something before the drums kick in and it gets more hectic
Track 13(Hate) Sorry, don't like this at all. After all the sublimity that has been caressing my ears this is just rubbish
Track 14(Hate) Meh, nothing much
Track 15(Love) Glockenspiel duet? Very nice.
Track 16(Hate) Oh joy! French kids singing.
Track 17(Love) This is more like it. Back to the lovely relaxed ambient music, then some more venturing into Floyd territory. Winding up towards a great conclusion, the shall we say throwaway tracks above notwithstanding.
Track 18(Love) Some more soft ambient with rising synth (is there synth on this? I'm sure I heard piano anyway, but no keyboards are credited...) and finally we draw to a close with
Track 19(Love) Slow feedback guitar (phased?) like a final coda to the album. I'm now a fan.
End result: My first comment was going to be “Please stop sending me double albums. It's hard enough getting through single ones.” But if they're as good as this, then keep sending them! Absolutely amazing. Just what I was looking for. For some reason I thought these guys were metal! Weird huh? Superb stuff, pretty much all around.
So, Love or Hate? Not only a Love, but a very clear and sincere
True Love.
Chances of a full review: 10/10