About three songs into Godspeed You Black Emperor’s set at the Metro in Chicago last Saturday night, I felt a polite tap on my back. I turned and noticed a pair of small women looking at me, wide-eyed and smiling. I took out my ear protection to hear what one of them was saying.“We’re really, really short and we can’t see the stage. Would it be possible if we could squeeze up to the front so that we could see?”
I thought about the request for a moment, considering what a good dead that I would be providing the young women.
Suddenly, I smacked some sense into my head.
“No thanks,” I replied “I’m good.”
They took it surprisingly well, but I’m sure they had some choice words for yours truly later on.
You don’t go to a restaurant and ask someone sitting at a table if you can sit with them because you don’t want to wait for a seat, do you?
Of course not, so I struggled with their attempts at weaseling their way in front after we had dutifully arrived on time to secure our spots early to get a closer view at a band that’s notoriously faceless while also being woefully absent for the better part of a decade. Now that there was an opportunity to see Godspeed You Black Emperor recreate their audio maelstrom in the flesh, there was no amount of eyelid fluttering that would prompt me to move my frame for an even worse view.
We suffered through Canadian opener, Eric Chenaux, a gentle and acoustic performer who also sported a few guitar pedals that he could play over a created drone or loop. At one point, he spent more time introducing a song inspired by the names of batches of beer. At another, he played a solo that was continuously interrupted by a bad connection. When he kept playing, I considered that maybe all of the static and endless cutouts were actually part of the act. That idea actually angered me to the point where it took all of my might not to reach into my Crown and Coke, grab an ice cube and heave it at him on stage.
Thankfully, the opener didn’t have to lug off a bunch of equipment before a few people began making their way on to the stage to ready the amplifiers and whatever else that the sound technicians do between line-ups.
The activity caused a few eager attendees to hoot and holler, which caused one smartass to sarcastically yell “Yeah, let’s all cheer for the guitar tech!”
The joke was on him in the end as the disheveled looking middle-age man actually turned out to be one of the guitarists for Godspeed.
Come to think of it, there really is no joking at all when it comes to this Canadian instrumental band that lets their music create a subversive environment of lefty themes and end of days soundtracks. They remain stoically faceless, allowing the audience to formulate how far they wish to let their epic songscapes take them.
And after two-and-a-half hours of such good cop/bad cop pummeling, I imagine that the songs prompted most of the attendees of this sold out show to consider the comforts of their own beds as their next destination.
Pulling highlights from their brief yet impressive catalog and featuring a new track that’s evidently being used for a new animation short, GSYBE’s set featured almost identical song structures, partitioned by the occasional applause from audience members who would praise the dynamic roller coaster of the last song and hesitantly acknowledge them when they recognized another. After a while, it became harder to do as each cut would start out with the same slow build as the one before it.
There’s been much written about the band’s use of old-school projectors beaming out various film loops behind the band. Since GSYBE don’t do much in terms of stage presence, the visuals are much needed to compensate for those audience members too fidgety to watch a bunch of musicians who barely looked up from their instruments and who-not once-verbally acknowledged the audience.
There was nothing special about these visuals, which typically just showed things like birds in flight, earth-moving equipment, and other monochromatic images that were quasi-related to the tempo and temperament of the music. Sometimes, the projectionists would do things like cover the lens of the machine, causing the images to appear and disappear over themselves. While it was neat hearing the sound of five projectors clicking away in the background of the quieter songs, there was really not much to speak on the effectiveness of what appeared on screen.
What can be spoken to is the sounds that GSYBE unleashed. It was a perfect recreation of what you would typically hear on record, and that alone is impressive. Regardless of how the non-existent song titles began to morph together after the 90-minute mark, there’s no denying that the eventual cacophony produced its desired effect. It’s a sound that is exclusive to the band, so even though I may moan slightly at how the band’s body style looks the same with each passing model, there’s no denying that the engine in every one of Godspeed’s vehicles is powerful enough to decimate any faint of heart that wandering into their path.
For many songs, I simply closed my eyes and allow the song take me into a different headspace. Occasionally, I’d open them just to bit to make sure nobody was thinking I was going to crash over from being drunk (How could I be? A shot and a Crown and Coke chaser cost almost as much as the ticket itself!) and to find my center of gravity. It’s true: during some moments of full-throttle execution, I needed to collect myself because the band was taking me into a different realm altogether.
I’ve experienced this only a few times in my life-most of them occurring at a Grateful Dead shows where you felt a bit of air between the soles of your shoes and the ground during some of their instrumental moments.
Not here.
The biggest difference was how GSYBE seemed intent on teasing us to lift our skinny fists to heaven before hitting our collective heads with sounds so brutal that we were all jammed back down into the soil at their discretion.
And after a while, I began to feel a little punch drunk.
At two hours and forty-five minutes, it was admittedly forty-five minutes too long. There’s only so much you can take after being pile-drived over and over again. I say this not to criticize the soft/loud dynamics that is the band’s primary pattern, but to also acknowledge that in the middle of all those crescendos is some very honest and emotional performances.
Guitarist Efirm Menuck controlled most of the high fret strumming that gives the songs that jet engine sound towards the end of their more vicious pieces.
Second guitarist David Bryant didn’t crack a smile the entire night. You could see his jaw tendons throb at various stages of performing and his eyes were shut during most of the performance. At times, he didn’t look like he wanted to be there and he was the first one to exit the stage at the end.
Maybe he just wanted to get away from the aural onslaught of a quarter-hour of feedback and noise that developed at the end. It was a pointless, below the belt moved that proved nothing other than it was as pretentious as the ten minutes of low frequency drones that started the set.
The length was a problem as it undermined the power this band can unleash at the drop of a hat. The only explanation is that the band’s future is clearly up the air at this time, prompting one to consider that GSYBE may be giving audience members a longer glimpse of them in action-one final time-before the members close up shop either for good or for another extended hiatus.
If that’s the case, I’m sure the ensuing years of their activity will undoubtedly cause my few complaints about this show to disappear over the years, causing all of Saturday night’s highlights to become even more amplified-painted in you-had-to-be-there colors and remember-when patterns.
Ultimately, the most impressive thing would have to be that, yes, GSYBE were able to recreate their beautiful chaos perfectly and there is something admirable about their communal approach to music making. It’s still valid, and it’s still powerful. It was memorable and it will be missed.
Here’s to keeping your piehole shut and your amplifier on.
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