Godspeed You! Black Emperor |
For Yanqui UXO Montreal collective Godspeed You Black Emperor! has retained the production services of Steve Albini. At first glance it seems an unusual combination: GYBE!'s orchestral improvisations are a far cry from former Albini clients like the Pixies, Helmet, Nirvana, Bush and The Jesus Lizard. Albini and GYBE! may both deserve kudos for stretching their range. Still, the final result is mixed and ultimately unsatisfying. While it has moments of glory, Yanqui UXO never matches the brilliance and beauty of earlier GYBE! releases. Yanqui UXO has none of the 'found monologues' which graced its predecessors; instead, it relies solely on the band's instrumental prowess and compositional abilities. This was a step in the wrong direction. Some of GYBE!'s most memorable moments have come from the juxtaposition of spoken-word monologues with instrumentation -- the haunting violin threnody alongside a preacher's "When you see the face of God you will die..." speech from Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, the amusing yet chilling street person rant underpinning "Bbf3" on Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada. Perhaps Albini was trying to slim things down... but he's thrown out the baby with the bathwater. To make matters worse, Albini hasn't stopped the occasional self-indulgence which has always crept into GYBE!'s works. "09-15-00 (Part One)" begins with a pretty guitar phrase... but, alas, five minutes later he's still working on the same phrase. GYBE!'s work has always featured a slow buildup into a riveting crescendo, but "09-15-00 (Parts One and Two)" is too slow and the crescendo not riveting enough. Instead of calling to mind Gorecki's gorgeous sonic sculptures, this one evokes Phillip Glass at his most self-indulgent. On "Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls" Albini lets his grunge roots show. The production here is as distorted and reverb-heavy as anything on In Utero ... but this is a nine-piece band featuring a violinist and a cello, not Nirvana! The melody gets lost in sonic sludge, with echoes of clarinet, trumpet and timpani occasionally peeking through but never able to rise above the noise. Albini appears overwhelmed here: unable to turn this unweildy nonet into a unit, what he creates instead is an echoing mess. Only on "Motherfucker/Redeemer," the thirty-minute two-part closing track, do things finally improve. Where most GYBE! works begin slow and build to a climax, this one starts out with a wall of sound that would have done Phil Spector proud, then gives way to a plaintive violin line rising out of the chaos. This one has all the breathtaking beauty of earlier Godspeed releases and here Albini's reverb-heavy hand only adds to the proceedings. Arguably the best thing GYBE! has done to date, it is a powerful closing which nearly redeems everything that has gone before it. While Yanqui UXO is ultimately an unsatisfying CD, it is not a disappointing one. On the heels of a masterpiece like Lift Your Skinny Fists... , it would be easy enough for GYBE! to rest on their laurels, creating pretty tunes until they became sad parodies of themselves. Yanqui UXO shows that they are still trying to expand their horizons. It is a bold step, if not an entirely successful one, and gives me hope that their next CD will be their best one yet. Track Listings GYBE Pages: |