Get this out of the fuckin' way quick: the opening act's staggering lack of musical merit (I'm so proooooooooggy) was outweighed entirely by his situational merit. Confused? Half of a concert experience is the interaction you have with those with whom you went- in my case a very attractive, intelligent girl with whom I share a brotherly-sisterly bond. And the opening act gets ya—they always fuckin' get ya—at the worst possible time, because they're up on stage and you're in the middle of a brilliant statement and—wait, should I stop talking, should I quiet down?—nah, they're just fuckin' roadies, they all look exactly like fuckin' roadies—and holy shit they're playing music, they're legit, and now I have to stop! Bullshit! So this roadie-lookin' blowjob comes up on stage with his guitar (I think it was a guitar, but since he was a proggy douchebag, he refused to make guitar sounds for the entirety of his set and I have no way of confirming) and he plays a few random notes. Some boring atonal samples start looping (so prooooooogggy) and we all quiet down. And then one by one we, bored by his pretension/convention (note to self: coin neologism) realize that there's nothing worth listening to and one by one we return to our conversations, the volume increasing so beautifully—this is logarithmic, get a fucking mathematician in here because this is logarithmic—and bam I have one more hour to finish my conversation and the next conversation and the one after. We're all on the same page vis a vis situational merit now? Mmmmmkay. And now I come staggering out of the gate.
DECLAMATION
In the professional wrestling community we have this distinction between two types of fans. There's the marks, right. They're the mouth-breathing plebians who still think the shit's legit—or at least act like it—and basically make 8-year-old children out of themselves at the first opportunity. If you are a good guy, the mark will cheer for you—If you're a bad guy, the mark will boo you—If you're selling a T-shirt the mark will spend for you—because he is a fucking child and that is all he can do. Then we got the smarts, who are the smug, self-absorbed assholes who will cheer someone because they do a 450 arm-trap corkscrew springboard original powerbomb five times a minute. They boo people because those goddamn infantile marks happen to like them, and they buy merchandise so they can strategically create the “Oh, you're wearing a pro-wrestling shirt—isn't that stuff fake?” moment where they look down on that fucking mongoloid who doesn't understand their sophistication. But there are these moments—these rare, fleeting moments—when the deformed creature that is the smart, that is the pro-wrestling fan in general, becomes something more. When the smart realizes he's watching something truly epic, truly memorable, he will—as we say in the biz—“mark out”. Away go the asshole pretensions and in come the representations of the best aspects of the medium: this right here, in this brief moment, is a man who not only appreciates the technical mastery and storytelling capability shown by the two men in the ring, but appreciates their match on the child-like emotional level as well.
See I mention this because when you are seeing Explosions in the Sky live, you are marking the fuck out. You are standing there or sitting there and up on that stage you see those fuckers—those brilliant fuckers!—and they are Hulk Hogan, they are Michael Jordan, they are Superman, they are Jesus Fucking Christ—and you're a child, you're just a fucking child, what the fuck could you possibly do, what the fuck else do you know how to do but display unconditional love? They're up there and you're trying to marshal your forces, all your musical knowledge—is that a Swamp Ash SG he's playing, I think it is but I can't be sure—but it's not, it's not, Gibson had nothing to do with it and it's made of light and its strings are sound and he's up there, playing that guitar! And you thought you could defy him. Critique him. You thought in your hubris you could understand a single thing he's doing up there on that stage, you fool, you human, you fucking child.
That's not to say that Explosions don't hold up under laboratory conditions. Rather! Far be it from me to suggest that they display anything but the highest levels of science in their recorded compositions. I mean, why the hell would we need another tub-thumping ringmaster commanding our attention raptly but shyly staring at her $400 leather boots when the whiteboards come out? I'll leave the honors to you, Hannah! See, she's got half the act down because Explosions only have so much time in their days and so many lives they can change, but I assure you—I'm callin' it—that Hannah will have, within four years, released a post-rock masterwork. Imagine her on the cover now! And return to this article after you've finished your twenty push-ups.
It was refreshing for me to receive confirmation that Explosions does in fact agree with me on the identities of their best songs (The Birth and Death of the Day, Catastrophe and the Cure, The Only Moment We Were Ever Alone). I mean, opinion becomes nothing the second you start doubting it, but there's all this fuckin' relevatism and it's good to see that Generic Pitchfork Writer #12 (Joph?) will find himself in a gleaming white prison of sound some day or other. Hey, not my call. Matter of fact, all I can be sure of is that Explosions delivered the most powerful concert experience I've had in the last year (don't get greedy now!), managing without any gimmicks. Fuckin' gimmicks! Can't go to a concert without having some blowjobs in Princeton haircuts acting out an ancient Greek morality play on a greenscreen! All they did for us, all they did to us was play music. We were treated to two hours of three men convicting us of murder with their guitars while the drummer played stenographer.
PERORATION
The stenographer is Vergil! The stenographer is Kafka! In the parlor! With the candlestick! Without remorse! Without hyperbole!
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