(Constellation)

Elongated music made busy

13 Blues For Thirteen Moons is the fifth LP from Montreal orchestral post-punks, Thee Silver Mt. Zion. It opens unusually, with the first 12 tracks being between 4 to 11 seconds long, and featuring wavering, high pitched string squeals of different frequencies. The majority of the album’s 59 minutes of content actually resides on tracks 13, 14, 15 and 16; which go for 13+ minutes each. 1,000,000 Died To Make This Sound starts with its titular mantra. The song then descends into a dirty psychedelic dirge – all growling guitars, screeching strings and booming bass and drums. Efrim Menuck traipses through a score of verses in a belligerent wail, stopping just short of singing off key. “Give me a god-damned shovel / I’ll dig my own damn hole”. The song then continues travel onwards and – seemingly – always upwards, never really feeling as long as it is. The level of interest created by the layering of six-plus instruments in a fugue around the central melodic clause, is enough to keep it fascinatingly trance-like, but intensely busy. The rest of the album follows a similar formula for stretching out time, but does so with completely different motifs, making for a record that manages to sucker you in by its ability to keep spinning the same tale, but in impressively unique ways. It feels like an indie post-rock Mars Volta at times, which I guess is the band’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor heritage showing through. That’s a good thing though, as any act that can play four songs over the course of an hour and still somehow feel concise, is all right with me.

****

JAKEB SMITH

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