This is the 2nd studio album by Montreal post-rock and experimental rock band, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Started as a trio, then expanded to a much larger band with a revolving door of members, until they realized that wasn’t working and settled as a 9 piece band. There was some turmoil with this revolving door leading up to their first album, F#A#∞, but I guess it all worked out in the end. This album was the only Canadian album on my wishlist that wasn’t from Toronto. It was either this or Rush’s Moving Pictures. This album has been on my radar for a long time, in fact, I wanted to listen to Swans’ Soundtracks For The Blind before I listened to this album, as I heard that Lift Your Skinny Fists borrowed a lot of ideas from that album, and while I barely see the resemblance between the two albums, listening to Soundtracks For The Blind did put me into the deep end of post-rock. In fact, it was the deepest end I could think of and it was great! I figured I would listen to this album as a Canada Day special as an olive branch to the rest of Canada because all the Canadian artists I’ve covered in video form have been from Toronto. Now when I go to review Canadian artists’ work, instead of not just doing Toronto artists, I now have to stop doing just Toronto and Montreal artists. So I finally listened to this album and I knew I would probably like it, but I didn’t know how much. I love this album! Production is immaculate with layering only helping the massive instruments do their thing. They’re never tripping over each other, almost never fighting to be heard, even though there are a few tiny weak spots here and there. Because it is a mostly instrumental album except for a few field recordings of people speaking, composition is the bread and butter of this album and it is incredible. It’s abstract and out there, it is post rock after all, so that might be a deterrent to you, but I really like it (because I might be super pretentious). It’s the closest thing to a classical symphony a rock album can get and if that’s your thing, you’re going to love this. Like I said, it’s an instrumental album with virtually no lyrics, so clearly the interpretation will be a little harder to grasp and perhaps more open-ended than what I’m used to, but there is definitely meaning in this urgent, powerful music. Sit back and enjoy the ride!
PRODUCTION
I love the production here. Most of the instruments sound great. Larger than life sound that makes this album sound absolutely epic and powerful and yet a little dishevelled and folky. There is a weak spot in this album’s armour, however. Its drums are a lot quieter than I would have liked. It starts when they come in at the beginning of Storm. I’m expecting these big marching drums leading this album to war, but it sounds flat. It doesn’t sound nearly confident enough to match the confidence of the rest of the instruments and with an album like this that’s chock full of them, EVERYONE needs to be firing on all cylinders. That said, everyone else sounds absolutely fantastic. No one’s butting in too much, no one’s fighting to be heard. These songs feel like 4 cohesive units thanks to this album’s production, which amplifies how well this band works together to make this behemoth.
God, I love these effects so much. The layering on this thing is second to none, with every instrument hanging out in their little corner adding their own dimension to each track. And that’s when they’re staying put! Some of these instruments move around as well and the panning is fantastic. Static in particular is super eerie and cool thanks to the panning, doomy drones, like the first movement that sounds like a train going through this dark, desolate land of well…static. We also get some of that on Like Antennas To Heaven with the drones. Speaking of that track, the processing on the drones of that song are so cool and they don’t sound like guitars at all, but I think they are. They just sound like instruments from another planet. It’s really creative stuff! The vocal pitch shifting on Static for the sermon sample gives off an eerie vibe as well, it very much reminded me of Swans’ Soundtracks For The Blind with the sex line worker samples on that album (very ironic). The reverb on the glockenspiels on Like Antennas To Heaven somehow make this song eerie and beautiful, which is the exact aesthetic that this album goes for. It’s great!
COMPOSITION
Composition is the bread and butter of this album and to this album’s credit, it’s incredible. The guitars are pretty fantastic. They do rhythm and lead well. Screeching on Static is pretty great, as well as the wailing guitars on Sleep. They really add a lot of power to those louder movements of the album. The quieter sections are great as well, such as the pretty strumming at the beginning of Sleep, which is so comforting it could lull me to sleep (but in a good way, of course). There are these drone sections that make up about half of this album and I don’t even know if they’re guitars or not. They just sound like they’re instruments from another planet. If it uses guitars, a good rock album that fancies itself as heavy or grand will know how to fill out its sound with guitar by using it in different ways and Lift Your Skinny Fists does that very well. Speaking of filling out sound, the bass is amazing on it. That fourth movement of Static with its upright bass line guiding the movement is so ominous yet intriguing and it serves as a great focal point for that whole movement. Also, the clanging bass on Like Antennas to Heaven is worth noticing as it gives a jolt of energy that would often be given by guitars, but here Godspeed really gives their bassist things to do! I love it when that happens! Now drums are little bit dicier on this record. When they’re clicking, they’re really clicking and they are an important element to this album’s power. The snares have a marching band quality on Storm and this energy on Sleep that is the most energetic snare work I’ve heard all year! Hi hats are pretty crisp as well. However, like I said, on Storm in particular, the production tends to nerf the drums by making them a little too quiet, especially the cymbals. A simple mistake that doesn’t really show itself again. In fact, the drums aren’t used for half of this record. They’re more used for those dramatic, loud parts and they don’t really show up with the quieter or drone sections.The string sections on this album are great as well, adding to the grand feel of this album. Sophie Trudeau on violin (no, not the Prime Minister of Canada’s wife, even though that would be very cool trivia) is a godsend to this record, as well as Norsola Johnson on cello, especially on Storm. The trumpets add to the pit orchestra vibe nicely as well, also on Storm. This album is just sweeping in its instrumentation.
I wasn’t all that fond about the structure before because, for lack of a better phrase, I just didn’t get it. I found the fact that Storm just stopped before going into that field recording movement I didn’t like at first. But then I actually sat down and listened to it. No note taking, no looking up anything, just listening and it all fell into place. Buildups are the name of the game with this album and I just love them. Sure, there are buildups that I have absolutely heard before in various other genres of music including other post rock albums I’ve heard, but I really like the builds on this album. They’re really dynamic and it makes the peaks really satisfying and rewarding while also giving the quiet parts a chance to cool the listener off to take them into another direction. I really didn’t expect this album to go out with the same whimper it came in with, but it makes sense narratively, which I like. Song structure is cohesive given what Godspeed tries to do with it. These songs clock in at around 20 minutes each, but don’t let that intimidate you. There’s like 3-5 songs packed in there as far as the map’s concerned (yes, there is a map for this album), and of course they blend well together. I thought it would be unlikely that some of these movements would even fit together like the two major movements of Sleep or Like Antennas To Heaven, but it works and it works well. They want to make something really cohesive so they did something similar to what Pink Floyd did on Animals, which was to make long songs as opposed to short songs that bleed into one another. As for the whole album’s structure, it’s really amazing especially if you sit back to realize what this album is trying to do. It balances the bright and dark of this album incredibly well and that is really important to why Lift Your Skinny Fists works. Not only is it a great way to make sure the listener isn’t bored, but Godspeed also find a way to take that further and tell a story with the structure of this album.
LYRICS
Well, I can’t really talk about singers on a mostly instrumental album, now can I? With instrumental music such as post rock, interpretation isn’t necessarily as clear cut as lyrical music, and it’s more on the listener to figure out what the artists are trying to say if the listener is seeking some sort of “deeper meaning” through the music. Lift Your Skinny Fists is an example of this as it focuses on textures and worldbuilding through its instruments rather than vocals like a traditional modern rock album. But there are lyrics in this album, but they come in the form of field recordings and samples. I feel like they give us a clue as to what each song is trying to go for, if not a clear indication of what the songs are about. For example, the gas station field recording on Storm gives an atmosphere of landing in the middle of nowhere after a massive storm. The sermon on Static is pitch-shifted down and talks about death and rebirth through the Christian God. The Coney Island speech at the beginning of Sleep alludes to nostalgia and things not being what they used to be. Then the rest of the instruments come in and carry out that message alluded in those vocal samples.
I feel like in order to do any sort of proper analysis of this album’s themes, doing it any sort of justice, you need to move away from the lyrics and move towards the instruments. They say that “music is a universal language” and I feel Godspeed really took that message to heart when making this album. Lift Your Skinny Fists is an auditory journey that puts the listener in the driver’s seat while Godspeed builds the world around them. Starting off with Storm, we get this little, quiet guitar at the very beginning, which builds into a big crescendo. Then we move onto the “Amazing Grace” section, which is actually a reference to the first song on their first album, which they sample a funeral scene from a movie in which someone sings “Deliver us from the gathering storm”, which is an interesting tidbit, but not essential information. This is contrary to Death Grips’ Exmilitary where I feel like you need to know every single sample and its context in history in order to get the full experience, which I was kind of turned off by since I didn’t know some of the context and it was kind of turning fun music into homework. Godspeed thankfully doesn’t do this, and instead delivers on the advertised product. Storm builds a world that, well…builds and is teeming with life, only to be wiped out by a massive storm, and by the end, you’re left to watch your entire world turned to rubble with all your loved ones dead and the skies gray with the blaring radios from rescue efforts serving as white noise for the overshadowing, inconsolable grief. Then we get to Static, which picks right up where Storm lets off, which depicts a storm ridden, grey, desolate place and it’s a really eerie track, which explodes in a flurry of static-y noise only to bottom out into more desolation. Then we get some of that idea of how the world has changed, and not necessarily for the better on Sleep, with soothing, yet dark guitars but then something unexpected happens. The music gets faster and we see this sort of optimism, which harkens back to the opening of Storm. It’s a bright and glorious rebirth of the world and it shows an optimism that I wouldn’t expect anything compared to any Swans album to have. I absolutely love it! Then we get to the closer, Lift Your Skinny Fists, which I guess is a commentary on innocence and how that too is being degraded by society with the Appalachian lullaby, the glockenspiel duet and the kids singing (shoutout to the Toronto Zoo). Then it breaks into this last hurrah before quieting down into different drones and leaving just as it came: quietly. It’s a story of death and rebirth, the causes of which unknown, but that’s just my interpretation, which is the beauty of this album. It’s truly up to interpretation! In order to really get into this album fully, you have to give it your undivided attention, and then you will get immersed into the world of Lift Your Skinny Fists. What a fantastic record!
CONCLUSION
I have some unfortunate news to break. I have become a pretentious Canadian music fan (I know, shocking revelation). Lift Your Skinny Fists is Canada’s most well known and acclaimed Canadian contribution to /mu/, Rate Your Music, and Anthony Fantano’s heart and for good reason! Wow! Turns out that “olive branch to the rest of Canada” was a win-win! This album is absolutely amazing! Lift Your Skinny Fists is a compelling instrumental odyssey that will take you through a gauntlet of emotions and it gets better with each listen as you peel back more and more layers. Production is a bit disheveled like Funeral would be 4 years later (another amazing album from a Montreal band), but it’s still nice and clear. The only real problem is drums, and it’s a small problem on one song. The rest of the instruments sound great. The layering is what makes the worldbuilding of this album work so well and it’s really interesting with effects turning instruments I recognize into something else entirely which is very creative. Speaking of instruments, this instrumental album is stacked with a fairly wide array of instruments making these atmospheres. Guitars, bass, strings and even drums are all given a role and they all sound great. More than that, no one is a one trick pony and they can go somber and sad just as much as loud and extravagant. Speaking of which, this album is basically “Buildups: The Album” and I felt it was a it more of a patchwork than a cohesive album, but that was when I was adamantly and feverishly looking through every detail I could find about this album and what it means as I was listening to it, looking for answers there as opposed to coming to my own conclusions as this album goes along. I instead sat down, closed my eyes and just listened and this album’s beauty came more into view. These aren’t really songs like anything I’ve heard before, but four multi-faceted movements that somehow work together so well that they tell a story without words, and who could possibly say no to that?! Words can barely describe what this album is trying to do, but they do provide clues. It’s the instruments that make up the story, and what a story it is. It is both pessimistic and optimistic, depending on where you are in the album, and the best part is, it’s up to you to fill in the details of the story right down to the very finest detail and I absolutely love that. It’s not like a film score, where it’s a background element to advance and enhance the visual story. It’s a rock album and the world is contained in that album. But Lift Your Skinny Fists is possibly the closest rock music can get to a symphony. It’s not short, fun music that you can throw on at a party (unless your friends are either really cool or incredibly pretentious), but if you’re looking for an experience from your music, this album is for you! This album is a tour de force of emotional instrumental music and it is an experience that I will not soon forget.
I’m giving this one a Strong 9/10.
FAVOURITE TRACKS: Static, Sleep, Like Antennas To Heaven
LEAST FAVOURITE TRACK: Storm, but it’s really not by much, that song is also fantastic!
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