Explosions in the Sky
The Earth is not a Cold Dead Place
Explosions in the Sky delivers one of the more optimistic treatises on hope in our uncertain 21st century, all communicated instrumentally. Its poignant sweep is so broad words would only burden its flight. The Austin, Texas, quartet’s worldview, declared by its album title, lies antithetical to newspaper headlines that all is lost. “First Breath After Coma” opens the album with a solitary, repeating guitar note mimicking a heart monitor, as the growing volume of an insistent heartbeat serves as percussion and a summoning call, waking other instruments into an infinite, spiraling climb. The intuitive manner in which this band allows sounds to spread, flood and exit is positively gripping. EITS is relying on emotion and the subtleties of restraint to leave its signature indelibly etched in your heart, which it is bargaining is anything but a cold dead place.
