Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
Texas instrumentalists Explosions In the Sky make big, cinematic music with fairly basic instrumentation — mostly guitars and drums, a little bass — and their sixth studio effort, *Take Care, Take Care, Take Care*, offers up a number of firsts for the quartet: a first official video (for the cosmic and beautiful opener, “Last Known Surroundings”), the first use of vocals (utilized as effects only), and the first appearance of electronic drums (used very sparingly). The band’s crescendo-heavy, dramatic v. pastoral post-rock is considered by many to be the reigning brand of the genre, with recent output by fellow post-rockers Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor! being both spotty and rare. *Take Care* may be the best EITS record since their first; they are meticulously fine-tuning the way their artful washes of sound are delivered, how their atmospheric collisions are painted. EITS maintain a hopeful, transportive tone, and while there is much to delve into here without trepidation, we point out the comparatively brief, faces-to-the-sky joy of “Trembling Hands” and the stellar, ten-minute stretch of bliss that is “Let Me Back In” as great places to start. Say *yeah*.
What takes us so long between albums? It's a fair question. One of us got married. One of us has had two kids since the last album. One of us has panic attacks. One of us took classical guitar lessons. One of us restored a piano from 1888. One of us had a serious illness in the family (and a recovery). One of us attempted, but did not complete, the P90X program. One of us was obsessed with this new album having 17 shorter songs. One was obsessed with the album sounding like a dream. Two of us can't get to sleep most nights. Two of us wake up early in the morning and can't get back to sleep. No joke, it's a challenge schedule-wise. We had a weekend shut-in sleepover at one of our houses, in which we wrote music and watched movies and threw around ideas. It was productive and come to think of it, we should probably do that more often. We made at least 50 demos, and that's probably a conservative estimate. And ended up with six songs. At one point during these four years we got pretty frustrated and took a hiatus from music. We called it a sabbatical. It lasted a couple months. When 2010 showed up, with the sabbatical safely behind us, we looked around at all the demos, all the instruments, and tried to see some sort of sense, or theme, or anything in it all. And slowly, we found it was already there. One part became two parts, a new guitar line made one part come alive, an added tambourine made another sing. Things started to fit together in ways we couldn't have planned. One song was finished, and less than a week or two later another song was finished. The rest followed over the next six months. All of the songs came from the demos that we had worked on in the previous three years, demos that we had gone away from, and then come back to, and then expanded. In september of 2010, we drove out to a studio called sonic ranch, 20 miles east of el paso. We spent almost two weeks out there with our friend John Congleton, who recorded the album. It is a pretty great place, with five studios and a pet raccoon on a huge pecan ranch. When that was finished, we went back home to Austin and mixed the album at a studio called public hi-fi. and finally we mastered the album in New York CIty with Greg Galbi. We are pretty ecstatic with how it turned out. The album is called "Take Care, Take Care, Take Care." And even though that title sounds like a sign-off from us, it is far from it.
The last band standing playing primarily dramatic loud/soft instrumental post-rock returns with an LP of loud/soft instrumental post-rock.
As hard to define as post-rock is, it has one unifying ethic: experimenting with the tools and textures of rock music. In that sense, Explosions In The Sky—long considered one of the genre’s leading lights—isn’t post-rock at all. While so many of the band’s contemporaries have relentlessly challenged themselves, EITS…
Check out our album review of Artist's Take Care, Take Care, Take Care on Rolling Stone.com.
Like their home state of Texas, Explosions in the Sky are all about wide-open spaces, preferring to leave the landscape as it is rather than trying to fill every last bit of empty space just for the sake of doing so.
Eleven years ago, a modest record store flyer read: “Wanted: Sad triumphant rock band.” Eloquent in its simplicity yet modestly bold in its ambition, it’s arguably been Explosions In The Sky’s
There’s a moment on “Human Qualities”, the second track on post-rock titans Explosions in the Sky’s Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, where the...
Explosions in the Sky - Take Care, Take Care, Take Care review: Unquestionably the best album named Take Care in 2011.