Godspeed You! Black Emperor

G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! CONSTELLATION

Post-rock pioneers check in on our instrumental health.

Nearly 25 years on from their debut album, Godspeed You! Black Emperor are in an especially cryptic mood with their seventh. Unfathomable album and song titles aside, G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! is another deep dive into a musical world that has always seemed to exist outside of normal parameters. Although nominally affiliated with postrock, the Canadian ensemble’s sound has evolved far beyond it; everything here seems to ebb, flow, expand and contract with blissful, intuitive grace, as lines between genres are set ablaze and tidal-wave crescendos erupt in stately slow motion. Both Fire At Static Valley and closer Our Side Has To Win (For D.H.) opt for shimmering, free-form scree, but it’s the album’s brace of 20-minute epics that will have sonic voyagers salivating. Multipart meanderings through somnambulant krautrock, melancholy drone and a thrillingly odd hybrid of skewed prog and unearthly chamber music confirm this band’s unwavering ability to evoke the unspoken, existential disquiet that bubbles beneath the surface of our sanity.

A beautiful but unbearably poignant soundtrack for these assuredly rubbish times. ■■■■■■■■■■