I love songs that create an atmosphere around themselves, a song where it lets you make up the meaning, a song where it gives you sudden images without any words. Few bands are able to accomplish this but Explosions in the Sky show they are masters of it. The band are one of the few new post-rock bands. A genre which is often based around creating a sort of atmosphere, showing no vocals (and usually when there is, it's more chants of ambience than actual singing). How Strange, Innocence is a great example of post-rock, with an initial 300 copies pressed, it was a small time release however with pressure from fans, there was a reissue of the album brought out at the latter part of 2005.
All the tracks on the album usually follow the same structure as every song starts off quiet and eventually builds up to a superb climax. Take my beloved song of the album,
A Song For Our Fathers which is a bit different from any other Explosions in the Sky. First thing is that the instruments actually use a progression and there is an actual drumbeat to the song which in other cases the drums would just usually be there to help everything build up. The song itself, is quite put it, beautiful. Some nice melodies there for the first half while the second half is filled with a continuing guitar part and this very fitting drumbeat. Another strange thing about the song is that the drums are quite high in the mix while the drums in other songs would be quite low. When I listen to the song, I get an image of a prisoner running away. Where would I get this image might you ask? Simply from the continuing siren sounds throughout. I enjoy this album simply because it is beautiful strong music, a good representation of post-rock and it is a joy to listen to half asleep or even in your bed just dozing off. The technicality of the band does not matter in this case, as the guitars are the easiest thing ever to play, the key word here is atmosphere and lots of it. The bass does keep the music going and when playing in the background could be hard to hear but without it, the music would seem rather small.
But why does this album not get a high rating? The answer is quite simple. I can only ever listen to this album when I'm dozing off otherwise it doesn't really have a great effect on me. The songs do have the same feel throughout and to the non post-rock fan can be very intimidating but fans of the genre will lap this up in it's entirety. I recommend this to fans of the genre or even people wanting to get into the genre and don't know where to start. This isn't the legend of the genre but it's a damn good album none the less.
