Texan four-piece Explosions in the Sky have developed an international cult following as their post-rock instrumentals have appeared everywhere from film soundtracks to TV trailers. However, drummer Chris Hrasky recently quipped that the last fate the band want for their sixth album is for it to accompany “rousing sports montages”. It’s unlikely, as the band have taken a detour from trademark glacial beauty into more pensive, sinister terrain. Thus, among The Wilderness’s gentle pianos and Eno-like ambience are percussive depth charges, industrial machine-like sounds and frantic math-rock.
Explosions In The Sky finally returned this year with their long-awaited followup to 2011’s Take Care, Take Care, Take Care. How they still find ways to make their brand of post-rock feel as fresh and angelic as it first did 16 years ago is one of the many alluring facets of the new album “The Wilderness” . It’s another sprawling epic, yawning with fresh air and stretching impressive muscles previously unused by the Lone Star post-rockers. Digitized bleeps and bloops punctuate their amber swells (“Tangle Formations”) while Chris Hrasky’s rousing percussion (“Logic of a Dream”) turns self-respecting atheists into believers.
The lovely Colors in Space suddenly erupts into jarring noise reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Psycho. It works, though, because the melodies are as strong as ever, and among the darker shades, the lighter moments wallop home. Tangle Formations and Infinite Orbit are terrific tunes, and the elementally softly rocking Landing Cliffs makes a spectacularly pretty climax to another beautifully understated epic.
The Fat Angel Sings 