Consider the branch of post-rock that was more or less introduced by Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai in the late 1990s, and is now practiced by Explosions in the Sky, Mono, and others. This music focuses on songs with slow, spare beginnings that steadily climb to huge crescendos bursting at the seems with guitar strums and, often, violin swells. It's easy to forget just how powerful this stuff sounded on first exposure. All of a sudden the direct and emotionally charged communication of film soundtracks was available from instrumental rock bands. And live, man, with the loud climaxes even louder, it was something to behold.
Still, something strange has happened with this sort of music since. It's almost as if the sense of structure laid out in the late 90s proved to be so winning, bands grew afraid to mess with it. Some do what they can to branch out, such as Mogwai, who on record moved on to other things long ago. But it's strange how predictable this music, which depends partly on surprise for those big moments to resonate, has become.
You could almost compare it to 12-bar blues, where after the second repetition of the first couplet you can feel in your body which chord is coming next; when bands of this ilk stick to the quintessence-- which is most of the time-- you can anticipate every modulation of sound well before it arrives. Here on their debut record, England's Yndi Halda adhere closely to the "classic" form of this kind of post-rock. Over four tracks that average about 15 minutes per, they milk the formula for everything it's worth.
How much is left to milk, and exactly what it's worth at this point, will vary a lot from listener to listener. Suffice to say Yndi Halda generally do this thing pretty well. The production is nice, the crescendos crash, the strings and guitar distortion are impressively loud. It's a well-established form, and they hit their marks. They even add a new wrinkle in the form of wordless vocals that crop up here and there, most notably on the last section of the 17-minute "Dash and Blast". Hearing the mass of voices belting out "Dah-da-dah-du-dah" in time with the guitar melody sounds a bit cheesy when it first hits, but then begins to sound pretty great, in part because it sounds a bit cheesy. The voices are a tad clumsy but in a charming way, which, after all the by-the-book moves in a form that takes itself so seriously, is welcome.
Still, the changes from bar to bar on Enjoy Eternal Bliss are so telegraphed, it's hard to get excited, especially if you've heard a good bit of this kind of thing already. They can play their instruments, and they've mastered the sound. Yndi Halda know their way around the build, so here's hoping they spend their next record thinking out how the music might be taken apart.
