Buoyed by the success of their soundtrack to the hit film Friday Night Lights, the Texas quintet Explosions in the Sky finds itself at the head of the all-instrumental-rock-band class lazily labeled “post-rock.” The band employs similar soft-loud dynamics pioneered by the likes of Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, but with a panoramic twist: These songs contrast squalling emotional crescendos with minor-key soundscapes as lonesome as the Texas brush lands surrounding their Austin home.
Chris Smith, one of the band’s guitarists, shared some thoughts via e-mail about their new record, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, and life after the Friday Night Lights soundtrack.
Mountain Xpress: “What was the inspiration behind the new record’s title?”
Chris Smith: “About three or four years ago, I was going through some old letters and I found a picture of my parents on vacation sometime in the ‘70s, and on the back (in my handwriting) were written the words ‘all of a sudden I miss everyone.’ We all related to the title because we all have an unfortunate tendency to periodically shut ourselves off from the world and even our loved ones for long periods, and then end up missing everybody.”
MX: “Friday Night Lights really increased your profile; how has that experience affected the band?”
C.S.: “I guess it’s impossible to tell how many more albums we’ve sold as a result of the soundtrack, but it has certainly helped in some way, based on how many people write to us and tell us they heard the music in the film and then tracked us down. One of my favorite things is when someone who never listens to anything remotely like our music ends up liking us so much they feel moved to write to us. People tell us they use our music to pump them up for football games (!), or to wind down as they are stationed in Iraq, or they use our music as the backing track for their ballet performance. It’s truly humbling and moving.”
MX: “What are the advantages or disadvantages of playing instrumental rock?”
C.S.: “We are occasionally maligned for ‘all of our songs sounding the same,’ and I think it’s a tad unfair. I think a large part of that is because it is instrumental. Certainly we have our sound, and there is a unity to each album, but we spend a lot of time trying to give each song its own world, its own dynamics and phrasings and textures and ways of developing. And yet I rarely hear this same criticism of vocal music, because having different lyrics in each song differentiates the songs, even if they sound very similar and are structured similarly.
“I think we are a rock band in the same way that Mastodon or Trail of Dead or Radiohead are rock bands (well, maybe not Radiohead—they seem to transcend all). The first music on this earth was undoubtedly instrumental. Vocals are another instrument, but I think instrumental music can ‘say’ as much as vocal music.”
[John Schacht is a freelance music writer and contributor to Harp and Allmusic.com.]
Explosions in the Sky play The Grey Eagle (185 Clingman Ave.) on Wednesday, March 14, with Eluvium and the Paper Chase. The show is sold out. 232-5800.
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