Unknown Masterpieces, Part 3
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
This is not an easy album to describe. It’s good, though, I can promise you that. Antennas to Heaven is composed of four lengthy tracks (the shortest is almost nineteen minutes long) presented in complex arrangements. True to the post-rock genre, the songs are all structured around repetition and gradual modification of their themes.
But, surprisingly, despite the lengthy and repetitive nature of the music, the songs seem pass you by pretty quickly. Perhaps the first listen of Antennas to Heaven will leave you feeling confused, as it’s nearly an hour and a half of slow-paced, moody instrumental music and occasionally abrasive sounds. Give the record another chance, however, and you’ll find yourself being drawn into the long, slow-building crescendos to Godspeed’s masterful, cinematic peaks. The band obviously know how orchestrate a dramatic climax, and they demonstrated those skills several times on each of these four songs.
It’s long, and it’s probably boring the first time, but Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven is undeniably worth the time required to properly appreciate it. And most importantly, it gets better every time you hear it.
Tags: Antennas to Heaven, Godspeed, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, music, post-rock, Skinny Fists, unknown masterpiece