DEEP POLITICS

"Deep Politics" is one of the very best Post-Rock albums of the year.

2011 is an interesting year for post-rock: it seems like the bands of this genre have decided to go a little crazy this year and put a huge amount of influences, to the point where you can barely tell id it's post-rock or not. OK, I haven't head the new Mogwai or the new Explosions In The Sky, but I did hear the new Long Distance Calling, which was influenced a lot by metal and some electronic. "Deep Politics" is completely different. In a good way.

I'm getting to the point where I consider this album more like Space rock; there are very few post-rock elements, which was something I got really surprised for. The music, yes, is a little spacey thanks to the pretty massive use of keyboards and mellotron. We got some very dark sounding strings and cellos here and there, some accompanied by the keyboards, some samples, some strange sounding flutes, some piano, some very tense electric guitar, that always keeps you gripped on the edge of your seat, thinking that it might explode into an intense and fierce part of the song , but it never does. Some influences of ethnic music, such as Indian or Arabic, as well as cinematic and Morricone like moods. Also, acoustic guitars can be present. So "Deep Politics" sounds a lot like a kaleidoscope of sounds, and all the tracks differ a lot from each other. "Deep Politics" is an instrumental album, but the music is so rich and beautiful that vocals would just ruin it.

Many of these songs are absolutely memorable: the beginner, "Future Primitive", is one of the most spacey ones, and most definitely one of the best of the album, thanks to the effective and evocative ambience that perfectly goes with the more melodic part of the song. A more tense and creepy song is the second track, "All The Colors Of The Dark", due to its pointy sounding piano. But the chorus is more lively and epic sounding, and it really changes the atmosphere from there on. Other great songs are "Almost Grew My Hair", "I Led Three Lives", and the final track "Deep Snow", all of them have beautiful and unique sounding moments. Of course there are some moments of this album that could have been easily fixable, like the title track or the eerie "Corridors Of Power".

I wasn't exactly in love with the album overall, but I really had a good time listening to it, and definitely It gets to be my number 1 post-rock album of the year.

Share this GRAILS review

Social review comments () BETA

---

---

Review related links

• Send comments to EatThatPhonebook
• Report this review (#445238)
• Buy GRAILS music online with PA partners
• Show all GRAILS MP3/Stream
• Go to GRAILS page for videos, full discography with ratings, reviews and much more
• Go to Deep Politics page for more details, where to buy and ratings/reviews
• Search the Forum for GRAILS related discussions