Friday music blogging: Explosions in the Sky

You thought I forgot!

This week’s song is from a fantastic band out of Austin, Texas called Explosions in the Sky. They play in a style that has somewhat unfortunately been dubbed “post rock,” though the band, like most bands stuck with the label, hates it. The prefer plain old “rock.” What sets the genre apart is that it’s instrumental (no vocals), with long, complex, narrative songs that contain lots of quiet passages and crescendos. Explosions was one of the first bands in the genre to become popular, and now the internets are flooded with bands doing some variation on the formula.

Lots of people found Explosions through their work on the soundtrack of the movie Friday Night Lights (based on the book of the same name), which is about a high school football team in West Texas. The movie has subsequently been made into a television show on NBC, which also uses Explosions’ tunes. It’s a great fit — the music is quit reminiscent of the wide open, windy skies of Texas.

(Incidentally, the show is fantastic. I highly recommend it, and trust me, I don’t know the first thing about football, or Texas. It’s probably the best, most emotionally honest and subtle show on network TV right now, so naturally nobody watches it, and it barely escaped being cancelled after the first season. Check it out when it starts back up this fall.)

Anyway, this song, “Catastrophe and the Cure,” is from their latest album, All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone. It’s a doozy.