I have a mild like of the band, I play their records every once in awhile. I didn't have much interest in seeing them live, and after this article, I'm convinced.

From the Washington Post:



Glum Rock: Godspeed's Joyless Noise

By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 6, 2003; Page C02


Once I realized there are neither blacks nor emperors in the Canadian chamber-rock collective Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and once its Wednesday show stretched past the 90-minute mark, I started inventing variations on its gloriously meaningless name. Amscray You Pink Chicken Patties! Lactate You Wet Billygoats! Then I dreamed up one that actually suits this intensely self-serious band: Lighten Up You Grim Frostbacks!

If there's a pop act on the planet more solemn than GYBE, it's probably playing funerals. The group performed in near-total darkness, uttered a total of about eight words and seemed not merely bewildered by the size of the crowd at the 9:30 club but mildly annoyed by it. When the concert ended, a couple of the eight or nine musicians -- hey, it was dark in there -- offered a timid wave at fans. The others just stoically laid down their instruments and walked off the stage.

What do you expect from a band that recently moved the exclamation point in its name? Yes, as it turns out, the band isn't Godspeed You Black Emperor! after all. As of its 2002 release, "Yanqui U.X.O.," the group will thank you for referring to it as Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

This punctuation change hasn't added levity to Godspeed's songs. With cello, violin, drums and guitars, Godspeed whips up epic sound-squalls that soar from sighs to wails and back to sighs again, with moments of droning beauty in between. There are no vocals. Think of the symphonic cacophony that precedes the final note of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life," then add drums and a glimmer of melody, and then draw the whole thing out for eight minutes. Then turn it up real loud, and that's what the Godspeed orchestra sounds like when all of its gloom-producing cylinders are firing.

The band members rarely do interviews, but they've talked enough to describe their origins and explain why they're so mopey. GYBE -- the name is allegedly lifted from the title of a documentary about a Japanese motorcycle gang -- formed in Montreal in the mid-'90s, a group of disenfranchised musicians who admired the anti-commercial spirit of punk and had the skill and instruments to set Bach to a beat. Their first recording was a cassette with an unprintable title, a mere 33 copies of which were made. Next came a long player called "F#A#," and despite pressing just 550 copies, Godspeed was suddenly and reluctantly on its way to indie-rock fame.

Its beef with renown? You wouldn't know it from the music, since there are no lyrics, but Godspeed leans hard left politically and wishes that one day the whole world would go on a rent strike until . . . something very dramatic happens. And all those fans now cramming into their shows, that bothers them, too, because it's hard to connect on a personal level to 700 people at one time and the whole business makes them sick anyway.

"Musicians, critics, bar owners, bookers, etc. we're all guilty, we're all cowards, weaklings, liars mostly," one Godspeed member wrote in an e-mail to the Wire, a magazine that eventually landed one of the few face-to-face interviews with the group. Venues, this unnamed band member added, "sometimes feel like death camps."

That doesn't exactly capture the vibe at the 9:30 club on Wednesday, which was shoulder-to-shoulder with 22-year-old fans who seemed to thrive on Godspeed's eerie aloofness. The visual weight of the show was borne by a white screen behind the band, onto which were projected film loops of slow-motion mundanity in unnamed cities. It was theater as much as music, a silent movie with a live band.

The concert started when the word "hope" flickered ominously onto a screen. Then the group wound itself into breathless, pounding summits, and set the unearthly sonic drama against black-and-white clips of pedestrians on New York City streets, or a car driving out of a cul-de-sac near a highway overpass. "Juxtaposition! you black emperor," it all screamed, and at its best Godspeed is wonderful at investing the dreary with something truly divine.

Unfortunately, the band can't offer much else. By the time Godspeed left some empty space for a round of applause, 50 minutes had elapsed, and over the next hour, the band could only rearrange the same ideas with different images and subtle variations on its raindrops/hurricane/raindrops formula. By midnight, a dozen fans were propped against the wall of 9:30's balcony, sound asleep, and about a quarter of the house had gone home. But everyone else howled for an encore, and Godspeed, in its sole concession to showmanship, gave them one.

i thought seeing them live was great. more in a performance art way than in a hey i'm going to see a band way.

if i want boring i'll go to the symphony (let the shittalking begin)