A Post-Rock Renaissance

Seeing Mogwai a couple weekends ago had me fearing that post-rock may have kicked the bucket - that even the cinematic post-rock giants like Mogwai were simply kicking a dead horse with nothing left to say.  Seeing Swans last Saturday completely erased that fear and made me realize, post-rock just smells a little funny…and that a new renaissance of Post-Rock is happening.    

So for those of you asking, "What is post-rock?" - The genre's name was coined by Simon Reynolds in his review of Talk Talk's album from 1990 “Laughing Stock”.  He further expanded on the term later saying it’s basically "using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbre and textures rather than riffs and chords” and also talked about the relationship "between the real time, hands-on playing and the use of digital effects”.  The genre also uses rhythms, harmonies, melodies, and chord progressions that are not usually found in rock tradition and is primarily instrumental music.  The genre started in 1990, with Slint’s “Spiderland” and then Talk Talk’s “Laughing Stock” being the first albums in this genre.  The peak of the genre was from the late 90s to the early 2000s, and as the 2000s continued landmark albums in this genre came along less and less frequently.

One of the Post-Rock giants is the Scottish band, Mogwai.  If you've never heard Mogwai the tracks "Mogwai Fear Satan" and "Like Herod" from their 1997 album "Young Team" are great places to start.  The fist time I saw Mogwai in 2009 was one of the most unique concert experiences of my life.  They played in a relatively smaller theater for nearly 3 hours from all over their catalogue and it was the loudest show (in decibels) I had ever seen.  The level of volume they played at was so important to this show as it added a somatic experience to the concert.  I felt every chord vibrate inside my body at a different rate.  And despite not being on any drugs, this multi-sensory experience from such brutally loud (but minimalist) music caused a synesthesia in which when I closed my eyed vivid and beautiful visuals were being triggered more intensely than I had ever seen.  And some of my friends who were at the show shared a similar experience - it was the kind of thing that was hard to put words to as it was so unlike any other show I had been to.  The show made me realized why Mogwai and the style of post-rock that they helped popularize was a thing – that had the ability to create a epic, cathartic, psychedelic experience to folks who allowed themselves to surrender to it - and that’s what this stuff is really all about.  

However, the last couple times they were supposed to play in Boston they had to cancel the show for heath related problems and such.  So obviously when the show came up last weekend I was ecstatic. I got in the front row once again and was prepared for a similar experience.  Unfortunately, the experience was very far from my expectations.  They played about a third as long (only a little over an hour), a third of the volume as when I saw them in 2009, and primarily only from their most recent releases (which are considerably less interesting than their earlier work).  Their new album is especially boring as fuck (with the exception of the track Remurdered - where everything they are going for actually works) and is easily the worst album they have ever put out.  

I walked away extremely disappointed (having looked forward to seeing them again for half a decade) as well with the fear that post-rock was truly dead – or at least this more cinematic branch of it (which would be excluding the more groovy jazz influenced branch of post-rock which was pioneered by bands like Tortoise - which never really got the mainstream exposure like the other school of post-rock has).  In regards to the giants in the cinematic branch of the genre - Sigur Ros’s last great album was in 2005, Mogwai’s last great album was 2006, Explosions in the Sky’s last great album was 2003…and EITS were a huge disappointment live as well when I saw them last year compared to when I had seem them in years before that.

It has been kind of heartbreaking seeing these great bands release painfully mediocre records for some time now and to see the genre become watered down, cheesier, and more commercialized.  With the success of bands like Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros – there have been a great deal of bands making similar sounding music that lacks the musical depth of the music they are inspired by.

On the ride home from the Mogwai show as I was thinking about this, I had to remind myself that on the contrary - in the past couple of years many of the pioneers of post-rock had come back after a hiatus of over a decade: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Swans, and Slint (the latter is the band that released what is widely considered the first post-rock album).   

Slint I had the pleasure of seeing on April 29^th at the Paradise and then got to see the documentary about them the following night called “Breadcrumb Trail” which I can’t recommend seeing enough.  They’ve got a pretty rad story – check out the trailer here. 

Their 1990 album Spiderland is easily one of the greatest post-rock albums of all time and is probably my favorite album of the 90s.  I’ve got my fingers crossed that there will be new material coming from them at some point in the near future.  From some of the things mentioned in the documentary it sounds relatively promising. 

I have seen Godspeed You! Black Emperor three times so far since they reunited, and every show has been a unique and amazing experience - the first being at St. Paul the Apostle Church in New York, then in Boston which was the first show where they debuted their new record Allelujah! Don't Bend, Ascend!, and the most recent time I saw them I got to hear at least a full new records worth of material when they opened for NIN last year.

Swans are a band I was recently turned on to, who was a great influence on Godspeed.  They started in the post-punk New York “No Wave” scene, then in the later 90s started making music that was more cinematic and more in the post-rock vein, and then also went on a ten year hiatus (where the leader of the band Michael Gira had a folk project called “Angels of Light”) until 2010 - and Swans are now releasing what some consider the greatest music of their career.  And last Saturday night they totally blew my mind. 

They tried out some new material, which Michael Gira said was like “trying to have sex with six condoms on” - but hearing a band that is over thirty years into their career and at that level explore new territory live was truly amazing.  They also played “A Little God in My Hands”, “Apostate” (the second part of this song which starts at 13:20 is an excellent place to start if you'd like to check out what Swans sound like nowadays) and “Bring the Sun”.  The grooves were hypnotic and it was some of the heaviest music I've ever heard.  

If you want, check out them playing “Apostate” slowed down 800% (thanks to Kyle Boston who filmed this and slowed it down):

(the last 30 seconds of this is pretty darn rad)

It was moments like this where you could see Gira become hypnotized and lost in the sound – and they took me there as well, and again - that’s what this music is all about.  And in a way it’s still derived from punk-rock – at times as a front-man his presence brought to mind folks like Ian Curtis (or even Iggy Pop before that).  And at times it’s brutal, intense and scary…but beyond this there’s a hypnotizing, psychedelic, meditative force.  And Swans’ sound today is one that I believe is already starting a new rebirth of Post-Rock.  A sound that is once again derived from the punk-music that it was originally born from.  A sound that is perhaps to some extent a reaction against the commercial watered down version of the genre that has become more popular in recent years.

If punk’s attitude can be summed up as with “fuck you”, and the existential anxiety ridden post-punk’s attitude can generally be summed up with “I’m fucked”…well, this new breed of post-rock’s attitude might be something along the lines of “fuck off, get free” (as the title of the new Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra record states).  It’s psychedelic, it’s spiritual, and it’s heavy as fuck...