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61 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Epic. Elevating. Divine., February 26, 2003
To many this Canadian nonet is pretentious. And while that may be true, but it really seems to be an irrelevant point when they create music so good. Now known as Godspeed You! Black Emperor (rather than Godspeed You Black Emperor! -- they moved the exclamation point), they are probably making the best music of their careers._Yanqui U.X.O._ marks some other transformations aside from a simple name change. The music at its core is still the same: powerful movements of orchestral colossi, always opening with hermetic sparseness that is slowly hammered into shape with layers and layers of shifting guitars, bass, violins, and drums, until it finally rises into the heavens with towering crescendos. The differences, GY!BE has dropped those weird field recordings and the long ambient sections in between movements. Instead, on _Yanqui U.X.O._ when one movement ends, the other is just about to begin. Their emblematic build-ups are protracted compared to previous releases, making them more difficult to absorb. Songs from earlier albums felt segmented in obvious ways, making it easier to mentally grasp them. Here, movements are longer, blend together more smoothly, and climb higher -- at their peak these songs are far more densely layered and exhilarating, achieving biblical emotional force. I think the songs are also more droning on the whole, but there is an ineffable beauty to GY!BE's luminous melodies that makes even the most clamorous orchestral swell spine-tinglingly sublime. Here also, the music seems like a liquefied version of the band's methodical language (build-build-build-crescendo), making it seems less calculated and more authentic. This is probably because of the inescapable sense that this album has a decisive inevitability about it, like the songs could have been no other way. More than ever before, the individual movements patch together like pieces of a puzzle, so the music sounds less disjointed and far purer. Some have griped about the predominance of guitars over the violins in the mix, though I love what they did here. The mix gives the music a more quiet yet devastating power that is joined with a ghostly, mysterious element of more subdued and echoic strings. This gives the whole album a concurrent grandiosity and mystical flow. The entire album shimmers with a dim mystique, and everyone involved deserves the highest praise for the wealth of detail in this recording. Despite that detail and sonic clarity, musically this album is something of a blur. I find it to be their least accessible work in that a sense of human touch has gone perceptibly missing. The songs are monochromatic, abandoned environs heavy on ambiance but never comforting. But once the initial distancing effect of the music wears off, the power and drama of these incredible works come through. "09-15-00" is classic GY!BE/GYBE!: the myriad instruments are pockets of static, hissed soughs, liquid riffs, and ritual hymns. The musicians skillfully time themselves to allow ever-so-slight pauses where subtle musical breaths blow through the arrangement. The piece rises and falls beautifully and rather unpredictably, which surprises me. The second part (track two) in particular is one of the most beautiful things ever -- a grand monument being melted away by acid rain. "rockets fall on Rocket Falls" is a slow flight on perpetually discomfiting and wavering chords towards black-iron spires on the horizon. After the initial disorientation passes from the first peak, there is an insidious unctuosity felt as it breaks into a brief, disturbingly funny cartoonish effect of a falling bomb. From there, the final crescendo is a lonely, percussive funeral march across a boundless wasteland, assailed by a vindictive specter. "mother****er=redeemer" builds formally on its thin percussion-and-guitar arrangement when suddenly transformed (though not much has actually changed) into an bold rush across a span of glistening energy, the ideal musical accompaniment for the artwork of Alex Gray. It has that same spiritual intensity; that same chilling sense of exaltation. The rest of the track is a slowburn wind of echoic instrumentation that whispers of hope and dreams. The final part of the song, on track five, is like the musical prophecy of the end of all things we know...and the dawn of something infinitely greater. _Yanqui U.X.O._ is not just the best music this band has to offer, but some of the best music that music itself has to offer, period.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
How best to decribe this..., November 23, 2002
By A Customer
It's only within the last few months that I've seen GYBE's stuff showing up in music stores in this backwater of a city that I live in. So it was by sheer luck, that while I was looking for Sigur Ros' Aegatis Byrjun that I found this, and GYBE's older CD.
I actually bought "Skinny Fists" on a whim because I thought the name was so original that the music must be good. Thankfully, I was right. But having only heard "Skinny Fists" before this, it's the only thing I can compare "Yanqui UXO" to.It's certainly a departure in terms of sound from their previous CD. While Skinny Fists was interspersed with lengthy monologues, bizarre static interludes and ear-wrenchingly distorted feedback, Yanqui UXO has left out all of that. There's not a spoken word in any form, than I can distinguish, on this CD, nor are there huge gaps between songs composed entirely of feedback whine. GYBE gets straight to the point on this one, but their message is somewhat confused...
This CD may seem to have a war theme throughout it, especially if you go by the packaging, which comes complete with a schematic showing how major music labels endorse weapons-making companies..or something of that sort. But don't let it fool you, this CD shouldn't be taken as a musical response to current events...maybe it is, but the message is deeper than that. This is not a happy-sounding CD. Apparently GYBE doesn't like their music being referred to as "apocalyptic", but I can't think of a better word to describe the first four out of five tracks. It's depressing the whole way; no shaft of sunlight to brighten the corners like on Skinny Fists. It almost sounds like the band have suffered some sort of defeat and they're trying to climb their way back up after it. This is an expression of sorrow...until the last track, which is so very different from the others I had to remind myself it was GYBE I was listening to. Well, back to the actual music. Track one and two, while sharing a name, are very different. Track one is composed of two movements, both eerie, atmospheric; dark and creepy. About 7 and a half minutes in it sounds almost like a lullaby, but not any that would lull you into sleep.
Track two is more of the same but more subdued, with that very original screwdriver-guitar sound in the background. This song doesn't really climax anywhere, but is still loaded with emotion. Track three is probably the oddity of the CD, more warlike than the rest, twisted-sounding, screaming with the roar of jet engine sounds and, somewhere in the middle, violing making an almost cartoon-style sound of a bomb falling...whereupon the song changes to the sound of slow bass drums and clarinet, building back up to raging guitar. Track four begins with tinkly glockenspiel-ish dings, which mutate into guitar and violin, and then with typical Godspeed style reaches a screaming climax only to fall back down. The violin sound on this song is particularly wonderful.
After the initial emotional pain of the first half, the second movement is repeated deep shimmery guitar sound at glacial pace. This part doesn't really go anywhere, but still manages to be beautiful.
Now comes my personal favourite, the last track. This song is very different from the others, and the emotion is indefinable. It's not happy, but it's not quite depressed. It's by no means passive, but it's not truly angry either. The closest I can come to decribing it is the sound of determination. This is a truly beautiful creation, evil and elated at the same time. While the riddance of the monologues and feedback loops that GYBE became famous/infamous for makes the album a little less annoying than the last, it also gives the listener no handholds. Without them, on first (or second, or third) listen, it's very easy to become lost between songs. The lack of voice anywhere makes this a terribly difficult album to understand, but in my opinion that's one of the good things about it; the music isn't telling you anything; it's up to you to decide what the songs are about, what their message is, and while it'll probably seem muddled the first few times, it'll swing into focus after a while, and it's worth the wait.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Doooooooom!, September 10, 2004
When I heard what GYBE! (or GY!BE if you prefer) produced with Lift Your Skinny Fists..., I was convinced they'd foreseen the apocalypse and I wondered what they could do next. And shook with fear just a little. But somehow they upped the ante on every front with Yanqui U.X.O. It's even more dynamic, better produced & sequenced, and more peaceful/soothing in spots - and utterly terrifying in others - than before. The intense total-entropy sections are overwhelming, and still the flow between the quiet and crashing parts never quite seems contrived. It still amazes me how GY!BE can continue with the same methods they've showed on past albums and still avoid sounding like they're merely rehashing.
For those who haven't heard it - there aren't songs per se, but unstructured melodies that drift and groove and explore all kinds of rich aural textures as they go along. The musical sensibility & writing style is somewhere between classical and minimalist, though the instrumental lineup adds guitar, bass and drums to the strings, spiced up with random samples and non-instrument noises. All the sounds are blended into a richly textured mix that's simple and grand all at once. There's plenty of variety.. quiet muted strings building beds of soft clouds, thunderous roars of symphonic evil to scare the unsuspecting listener senseless, and everything in between.. but they wander from one extreme to the other gradually, taking five or ten minutes at a stretch. Unlike before this disc flows through its whole 75 minutes continuously, rather than moving from one definite section to the next with buffers and transitions between.
It's hard to form a real idea of the whole thing until after a good few listens. Some parts are so quiet and dreamy that keeping your mind from wandering is all but impossible. And on the other end of the scale some parts simply cannot be ignored, any more than you could ignore an earthquake as it collapses your house all around you. One way or another it draws you in, if you let it (and sometimes if you don't). It conveys powerful emotions, from wonder to calm to horror, with no words at all. How they can make sounds convey so much so clearly is still a marvel to me, but it's there to be felt and experienced, not analyzed.
Start with Lift Your Skinny Fists. Give it time. Let it paint its own pictures. If you want more, come right here.
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