review

Godspeed You Black Emperor, Yanqui U. X. O.

To avoid the lapse into muzak, instrumental rock must know what it's doing; especially at the discspanning lengths to which it tends to unfold. Sigur Ros' assertion of self sufficiency, that only music need fill their brackets, felt fragile after the first hour. But Godspeed's concerns in Yanqui U.X.O. are clear, baldly stated on both sides of its sleeve: a diagram linking record companies to arms manufacturers on one, a shot of the latter's products being delivered on the other. Inside, cardboard is printed with further cardboard, or 'footnotes maybe' hurriedly typed onto yellow lined paper. The documentary impulse extends into the music. Steve Albini - self-defined as 'recordist', not 'producer' - lets instruments rise from dusty hiss, guitar swarms crackle with midtones, drums throb distantly, and movement follow movement by jump cut. And the most distinctive instrumentation seems drawn from the archives: strings age warped to disintegration, a viola distorted to a klaxon tone. As a document, of course, it is counterfeit - those footnotes acknowledging the band's complicity in their choice of publisher - but it is at least a product of serious purpose, not of pretension or ungrounded hysteria.

This isn't to deny Godspeed deal in extremes: but they show a respectful sensitivity in how and when to apply them. Some pieces do lose control: the 'Motherfucker = Redeemer' diptych begins promisingly, with pings, hollow stabs and an unsettling extraction of the dance from a dance beat, but loses its way among muddy harmonies and noise for volume's sake, the title's contradiction unresolved. But at their best they are significant for more than sound and fury. 'Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls' turns quickly to darker than dark gothic excess, its roar culminating in a merciless hundredfold pounding on the final chord - only for trumpets and clarinets abruptly and disconcertingly to descend, and displace it with a mass-like ritual. But it's the opening '9-15-00' which shows their true craft, the eloquence of the dynamic arrangement. Its changes in layering don't merely make the sound grow and recede, but evoke subtle changes of heart; its chord sequences aren't just repeated to a crescendo, but themselves yearn for a crescendo. Here Godspeed's limited tonal palette is precisely mastered, the subtleties - the disquieting smoothness of a crash cymbal roll, the flourishes reviving the cliché of a military beat - as carefully judged as the grand gestures - the devastating waltz of the second movement, terrible and glorious, and terrible for its glory. If instruments can speak in indictment, they do so here.