#2 - F♯ A♯ ∞

#2
Artist: Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Album: F♯ A♯ ∞
Year of Release: 1997
Label: Kranky

Do you think the end of the world is coming?
No.  So says the preacher man, but I don't go by what he says.

GYBE's debut album is apocalyptic.  So obvious is this statement that it circles back around to being an essential utterance.  The beginning of each proper track on the CD version begins with a depiction of or reference to the end of days.  The electronic hums and the screeching violins and the literal trains emulate the sounds of a proper journey to hell.  The individual movements evoke the fury of a dying society ("The Sad Mafioso" was literally used as the opening to 28 Days Later).   Its identity is remarkably clear and says something original about a well-worn topic while never becoming something cliche or dull.

The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows
The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death
The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

I started this countdown as a distraction of sorts from our current apocalypse.  And now another apocalypse has taken its place.  And the end boss of all this still awaits in global warming.  So it's an appropriate time to sink into this album, even as it's more than twenty years old.  Because it's such a singular and bold work (even within GYBE's already peculiar oeuvre), it retains a sense of timelessness unlike anything else on this list.  The spirited waltz in "The Dead Flag Blues (Outro)" would sound as appropriate in an old west saloon as it would in whatever future you care to imagine.

And yet for all the talk of end times this album (and this band) does not despair.  What routinely strikes me upon re-listening are the moments of hope and grace present throughout.  It's not just in the music either.  It's in Efrim Menuck's drawing from the liner notes above.  It's in every live show the band kicks off with "Hope Drone."  And it's in the fact that this record exists at all.  GYBE very clearly does not go by what the preacher man says.

For Montreal art kids in the 1990s, there was no other way. Godspeed’s dark and foreboding sound suggests civilization heading toward collapse, and conjuring such a world wasn’t an act of imagination. They could see it around them. In April 1996, right around the time things were heating up at Hotel2Tango, an article appeared in the International Herald Tribune called “Montreal’s Deep Malaise,” in which reporter Anne Swardsoa described a city on the brink. On the ballot the previous year was a referendum on Quebec’s independence, and it was defeated by less than a single percentage point. Conflict and uncertainty were rife, and many English-speaking Montreal residents fled the city during the campaign. “The city that once was Canada’s financial and cultural center is in serious trouble,” Swardsoa wrote. “Its tax base is eroding, poverty is increasing, roads are deteriorating and, most important, citizens are leaving.”

It seems odd then that one of the seminal works on finding hope in despair comes from the middle of the nineties, one of the few times in recent memory where society seemed functional, at least on the surface.  But this is an extremely American perspective and GYBE is an incredibly Canadian band.  The quote above (from this fantastic review) shines some light on the context surrounding the record's creation.  Even without these specifics, such a worldview speaks to how armageddon is always present.  If not for you, then for someone else.  If not visible, then in the shadows.  And if not imminent, always at least possible.  Given this, how can you not feel a sense of doom all the time?  But how else can you move forward without some semblance of hope for the future?  This album is the contradictory nature of these feelings set to music.

The band accomplishes this in two ways.  One is the sense of urgency that underlies everything.  Songs build toward crescendos, multiple drummers pound away for added effect, industrial sounds dot the landscape, and "Black Helicopter" directly evokes a plague of locusts.  Even though the end product is clearly the result of a deliberate entity, every moment still sounds like it was recorded in one frantic take.  Not coincidentally, the individual movements appear in a different order on the CD than the original vinyl release, as if to say "get it all out while you can, who cares about the order."

The other is a delicate touch that subsequent GYBE releases would never quite match.  The band's entire career is based on an understanding of how to use soft/loud dynamics, but it's never as lived-in as it is here.  The precision of the faded guitars in "Slow Moving Trains," the hush of the band singing the melody in the middle of "The Sad Mafioso," the push and pull of "Dead Metheny."  All of these moments and more feel like they could fall apart immediately but they never do.  It always pushes forward until the final moments where a period of silence precedes the final "hidden" track.  Normally just a gimmick, this silence instead feels deserved and even necessary.  We've all been through a lot and a moment just to sit and reflect on something beautiful is as good of a gift as any.