Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven - Godspeed You Black Emperor

Every so often you discover something that leaves you reaching for superlatives - and a growing frustration with the inadequancies of the English language. "Lift Your Skinny Fists...", GYBE's much-anticipated follow-up to the "Slow Riot..." EP, in many ways epitomises this sentiment. A multi-layered yet sparce offering, "Lift..." offers a number of contraditions over the course of its 4 tracks - spread over a double-album. Covering a myriad of human emotions - at times uplifting and at the same time sad - the album is a fantastic unique achievement from the "post-rock" Montreal nine-piece. With rich ...  Read the complete review

The post-rock genre is thrown about and abused from all sides. People say the tracks are too long, that's it's pretentious junk, that it's weak music or just that it sucks. Well, post-rock takes a good deal of listening and a lack of pre-judgment in order to really "get it". Godspeed are an excellent example of a band deep in the post-rock genre. They produce a combination of loud, uplifting, awe-inspiring classically influenced tracks and slow, meandering journeys through sound. Lift Your Skinny Fists is a magic set of tracks that sounds like it is moving in an out of the eye of a hurricane. For comparative purposes, I guess you could say they sound like Sigur ...  Read the complete review

Possibly the finest moment for this band the double album is split into 4 tracks however it is easier to think of them structured similarly to symphonies. 1. Storm This opening number is a slow majestic song which builds up to a climactic cresendo using repeated motifs. Truly beautiful and is very uplifting overall. 2. Static Probably my least favourite track overall on this album. Is pretty standard gsy!be fayre. This moody track starts with sounds of passing trucks before morphing into a sorrowful guitar line backed with a recording of a preacher and then into another more animated section. 3. ...  Read the complete review