Label: Constellation Format: 2LP,CD
Yanqui U.X.O. is a record that demands time and attention to it’s myriad details as they shimmer past in a gathering whirl of music that sounds absolutely and profoundly played, rather than constructed, by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Recorded by Steve Albini with all his usual craftsmanship, this slow-building album coruscates with a stately emotional fire which reflects the band’s personal-political agenda of righteous indignation at the state of the world. Their own summation: “Yanqui is post-colonial imperialism is international police state is multinational corporate oligarchy.”
While the group recognise their own complicity as part of the corporate music industry through their record sales in chainstores, slip in sleevenote allusions to Ariel Sharon and the latest bloody Intifada and even provide a handy hand-drafted flowchart of multinational military-entertainment-industrial complex relations, they also point out “the new album is just music”. But what music it is, rippling from plangent guitar chimes at the opening of the two-track “09-15-00” through a languid preparation for the feedback uproar and martial march into part two, while around the strings weep softly in stirring, sorrowful cycles. The interplay of relentless guitar work at the apex of intensity and the crisp ticking beat into stratospheric elevation is underpinned by strategically-deployed bass shakes while ghostly harmonic visitations guide matters onward; and nudging of the volume controls upwards is suggested and recommended as much by the clear stereo spacing of some instruments as by the amalgamation of others.
The twenty-minute centrepiece “Rockets Fall On Rocket Falls” sways with hypnagogic vibrancy, setting phased controls for the jetsteams with suitably combustible energy, accelerating at juddering psychedelic Mach speeds of almost unbearable brightness and granularity. The sustained descent earthwards comes as something of a psychic relief, throttling back to a monospaced rhythm while the sanguine clarinets and trumpet call out their persuasive siren invitation to the refulgent reverbed guitars, whose arrival is possessed of an epic grandeur prefiguring their return to blistering altitude. The final calm still tingles with tension though, and the following introduction to half-hour span of the last two tracks only serves to heighten that brittle expectancy as the band tune up for the conclusion.
“Motherfucker=redeemer” soon bounces in on a sprightly bassline and an imminent surge of choppy guitar, unwinding strings and the self-assured air of a pre-planned Folk-Rock sprint naked through the standing stones. Hippy allusions aside, the lengthy build-up soon jumps gear again into a staccato variation on the propulsive theme of Yanqui U.XO., where the melodies rely more on the modal flow of sharply-strummed guitars in the foreground as the less distinct drone voices flitter into a reflectively meandering breakdown and the inevitable fireworks display of the rocket-fuelled resurgence in part two. In between, there are slow-breathed passages of portentous chug which provoke conjecture that a Doom Metal scenario is about to be played out on a wave of gutteral distortion pedal dementia, but Godspeed (or God’s Pee as they disarmingly elide their name) wrench trills and sweeps of melancholy choral shimmer from their instruments instead.
The finale buzzes in on insectoid horripilations, heading for that coruscating takeoff moment on rising fronts of wah and rapid-fire percussion. As if pursued by the Starship Hawkwind itself, the GYBE crew throttle forward a little unsteadily, but soon pick up the furious pace with characteristic fervour, coasting through distant passages of fuzz into a freewheeling lap of honour. With the last interwoven strains of the effects pedals dissipating to a violin droned stop!, Yanqui U.X.O. confirms its undoubted presence and power by the fact of its absence.
-Linus Tossio-
