The Rescue - Explosions In The Sky

The Rescue
by Explosions In The Sky
(Review written: April 15, 2006)

Music can be frustrating. That’s a given. I’m sure just about anyone has tried something musically, and I can almost assume that most of aforementioned people are mere amateurs at anything musical (myself included). I can willingly accept my faults, which are many.

There are a lot of things that go into making an album, and being able to present a message you’d like to express, but how about for an entirely instrumental band?

That’s the task that forever awaits Explosions In The Sky. After releasing Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place though, Explosions has decided to take a step back in the song writing process with their release of their 2005 EP, The Rescue.

Normally, a song could be written with great haste, and quickly recorded. But sometimes, songs for Explosions would take literal weeks to come up with as they searched for perfection. The novel concept behind The Rescue though is that the band aimed for a simple, somewhat daunting, but still interesting build of a record: write and record a song every day for two weeks. No riffs were allowed to be written beforehand, making the album essentially an instrumental improvisation.

Two weeks eventually turned into 8 days, but this surely doesn’t diminish the presence this The Rescue exudes. The album still has everything we’ve come to know and love about our favorite Texas post-rockers, but with many innovations and experimentations (including vocals, gasp!).
The songs are much shorter than your typical Explosions track, but each track boasts unique novelties, such as Day 1’s bells, that more than make up. The obvious “ambient song” of an instrumental band shows up on Day 3, a real gem on The Rescue, which includes very distant textured instrumenting along with audio clips from an occasion when their van broke down on their very first tour. The real shining piece of The Rescue shows on the diligent combination of instruments on Day 5, from a result of mixing everything from a piano and xylophone to a tambourine and jingle bells, with everything in between.

Explosions In The Sky proves that with a little ingenuity and abstract thinking, very interesting things can occur, and also show they aren’t a one trick pony and still have something to surprise their fans. Hopefully some ideas drawn from The Rescue EP will rub off on their next full length album.