LIFT YOUR SKINNY FISTS LIKE ANTENNAS TO HEAVEN

‘Lift…’ is an album I’ve really gone back and forth on over the past few years of listening to it. I first heard this after discovering the band on college radio and picking up f# a# ∞, and was completely blown away by that album and by this one. Eager to learn more about the band, I continued to listen to both albums, picked up their EP as well, and started poking around for interviews or other biographical/philosophical insights into the band. Frankly this was a mistake, as their general disdain for almost everything (including at times their own music) and their overall cult-like existence became a real turn-off, and I began to tire of this album knowing the band was openly expressing contempt for many of the people who enjoyed listening to it.

This music demands to be heard though, regardless of the emotions or the circumstances, so I was inexorably drawn back to it again and again over time, finally resigning myself to the fact that I really, really liked it.

I’ve heard this music described as post-classical, and in some ways I think that is a more appropriate classification than is post-rock. Despite the guitars and drums, these are highly orchestrated compositions, intended almost solely to elicit intense and complex emotions, and perhaps even to enlighten and to influence. I feel the same types and ranges of emotions when listening to this as I did back in my college days when exposed to the likes of Debussy or Ravel, and especially some of the latter baroque works of Händel, Bach, or even Vivaldi. The long compositions, intense crescendos, and sometimes haphazard and abrupt transitions, are all highly unusual attributes of most modern music. The band has of course spawned numerous other projects, including Set Fire to Flames, A Silver Mt. Zion, Bakunin’s Bum, 1-speed Bike, Fly Pan Am, Exhaust, Shalabi Effect, Esmerine, Molasses, Hṛṣṭa, and Valley of the Giants. All of them demonstrate the same penchant for challenging traditional definitions of what is music, even what could be considered progressive music. This is probably their best-known work, but unfortunately also marks the beginning of the end, as the band announced an indefinite hiatus between this release and their final album Yanqui U.X.O.

The four works on the album may seem similar at first listen, but after years of playing it, each composition begins to take on its own character, and the many variations begin to emerge. The first track “Storm” starts off with a rather homogeneous opening for this band, mild and melancholy strings, light bells, and some almost imperceptible guitar chords. For the first time as far as I can recall the band includes some horns, sporadic on this track but prominent on the second disc. The drums come in as expected after the strings have lain down a sufficiently glum mood, around the three minute mark. The inevitable crescendo comes surprisingly quickly for a Godspeed work, at around six minutes in. Most bands would consider this a solid ending, but not these guys – there’s still another sixteen minutes to go, and that’s only for the first track. Amid an unidentifiable sustain (cello maybe?), an acoustic guitar and what may be a piano start the trek back up the musical mountain for the second time, this time adding in several dissonant chords and even feedback along the way, and with a climax that drags out for several minutes and sounds all the world like the pending collapse of several large metal structures. This is the “gathering storm”, which slows down eventually and finally simply stops.

Here the band inserts one of the collected street sounds they first introduced with their epic debut f# a# ∞. These transition to a long closing featuring unintelligible male voices amidst brooding feedback and interminably sustained strings. If you can stay focused throughout, this is an incredible journey of feelings – despair, contempt, and finally just the lost confusion of The Struggle. We are now in the eye of the storm.

Static can be defined as a stationary condition; atmospheric electricity; or interference. I think the band intended the second work to refer to all three. The opening here sounds like a train building up steam, perhaps a clever play on the band’s stylistic tendencies, or maybe this is what comes after the Storm. The band employs some odd electronic sounds here that were probably gleaned from various street noises, all seeming to represent industrial noises like trains, planes, and other forms of conveyance. Again the band inserts the recorded ramblings of a seemingly apocalypse- obsessed religious nut ranting about songs of jubilee and the promises in wait once we get around to destroying what is now, so we can get to that. The next ten minutes of “Static” are a truly bizarre blend of horror-film plodding guitar, menacing strings, and eventually an explosion of drums and violent electronic feedback, not only building in intensity but also in pace, finally ending in a frenzied explosion that leaves only a long, desolate and solo sustain in its wake. The remainder of the work consists of several minutes of aimless sounds, wailing but disorganized, which finally and mercifully end. The storm appears to have passed.

One interesting thing about Godspeed is that they introduce us to some colorful characters, Blaise Bailey Finnegan III on New Riot, Steve Reich on that widely available live track of the same name, and the nameless cowboy on f# a# ∞. On “Sleep” the oddball is Murray Ostril, a middle-aged old coot who is reminiscing about simpler times and sleeping on the beach at Coney Island. Finally the music begins to take on a tone that at least suggests we should all remove our heads from our ovens, or put away the knife, or whatever it was the preceding onslaught of despair was bringing us to contemplate. While the slow and gloomy strings are still present, the mellow guitar chords offer a glimmer of life and light, and when the buildup comes eight minutes in, it is intoxicating and hypnotic and – wonderful! The guitar vibrato and solid, confident drums are uplifting and playful, and the driving guitar-led tempo that thrusts itself out of the crescendo is abso-f**cking-lutely dazzling! These five minutes or so are among the most exhilarating I have ever experienced while listening to music. In fact, I have to go play that part right now.

……

Damn! Still brilliant! Frankly, the rest of this composition is nothing more than the snuggling after sex; or the gleeful ride home after watching your favorite team win a championship; or what comes next after you’ve experienced the greatest moment of your life – still good, but never quite the same.

Incredibly, by now the listener has been subjected to emotions ranging from hesitance to fear to despair to anger to lust to joy to hope, and dozens of feelings in between. If you’re listening in your car you’ve long since lost focus on the road and are trapped inside a flaming pile of rubble alongside the highway. If you’ve played this at home the dinner has burnt on the stove, the cats are ensconced in the basement or a remote crawlspace, and the annoying Jehovah’s Witnesses finally tired of ringing the doorbell and moved on to the neighbor’s house. If you’re on the train – look up, you’ve missed your stop and the end of the line is approaching. Well over an hour of your life is gone, but the time was well-spent.

But there’s more. “Antennas to Heaven” opens with Moya singing “Baby-O”, truth-in- advertising since that’s what the liner notes say should come next, but also enough to shake the listener out of their catatonic state. Fortunately this doesn’t last long, but the bells and glockenspiel that follow seem just as surreal. Perhaps I should be torching up a joint or something at this point, not sure. But before I can think that one through, up comes a couple of French kids or something blathering mindless children’s rhymes. Weird. Not to worry, another intense buildup-then-explosion comes soon enough, followed this time by a second musical convulsion about ten minutes later. This is vintage Godspeed, but without the heavy and un-obliging moodiness of the first disc in this set. I’m not exactly sure what the rest of the track is supposed to do for me, but what it does do is bring me slowly back into a world of reality, and somehow manages to reset my emotions back to the here-and-now. I’ve now seen the darkness in the mouth of the roaring lion, but I am not afraid. This is knowledge good to have, but not that can consume me. My destiny is mine.

I have wondered if the title of this album is supposed to convey a similar thought to that Patti Smith had when she penned these lyrics for “Privilege” on her Easter album:

“In the presence of my enemies, Thou anointest my head with oil - my cup runneth over.

Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Ah, damn, goddamn, goddamn, goddamn –

Here I am!”

Seems like that’s not far from right anyway. This is a great album, just a razor-thin hair shy of indispensable, but better more intense and lasting than the vast majority of things you could stimulate yourself with today – and not nearly as bad for you as some of those things. Well worth an hour-and-a-half of your life.

peace