Wackiness.org Reviews Archive § Music

Where to even begin. To call Godspeed You Black Emperor! great would be a horrible horrible unworthy understatement. I would have to hit you on the head with a shovel and bury you in my backyard. Lift Yr. Skinny Fists like Antennas to Heaven itself is no different. If you enjoy music, any music at all, you will like this album. Seriously, though, in all fairness, I am giving this album a 100 and, according to our scoring system, this album will change your life. That's gotta say something.

One of the most detouring factors for all of GYBE!'s work for the average pop-scene follower would most likely be the fact that it's so progressive and so long and so slow and so... well, you get the idea. Nothing happens right away, you have to wait for it... be patient. This level of effort for music enjoyment can be too much for some people, but if you actually sit down and listen to a full album, or even a full track, you will understand why it works so well. It leads you up, slowly, gradually, something you don't even necessarily notice. But the longer you listen, the more complex, more intricate, more gusto, more everything, it becomes until you reach the point of full power. At first you don't even realize how you got there, but all the sounds you've been hearing finally make sense. The drops at the end are usually sudden, leaving you wanting so much more, but also giving you a chance to recover from the wonders you have just experienced.

It's quite hard to try and determine which songs would be better than any other, since it's usually even hard to tell when one song ends and another begins. Also, the tracks are not laid out in the usual one-song-per-track pattern, infact it's more like one-album-per-track, each track having about 4 songs with a total length of around 20 minutes (the actual layout as well as audio samples can be found here). It wouldn't, for that reason, be necessary to listen to the full album to get the full feel since every track throws out that great pattern, but do it anyway. It's well worth the hour, 27 minutes and 21 seconds of your life.

Antennas to Heaven may or may not change your life, but if you have any emotions at all, I can't see how it wouldn't affect you in some way. If you don't enjoy the drudgenly-depressed feeling in your music, though, you most likely won't enjoy this album. There's certainly more to it than that, but it makes up a large part of it, and could easily be too much for the up-beat happy music some may be used to. Even still, I'd highly suggest this album to anyone who wants to try for something new, who wants to experiment, who wants to get into the real world of indie, who wants to have an emotional journey you would never find in the common industry-driven world of music. I can't guarantee you'll like it, but I think it would be safe to say that if you do, it'll be one of your favorite albums of all time.

Rating

100/100

Reviewer

Zeff Svoboda

Published

December 14, 2003