Album Review: Explosions In The Sky - Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

Four years on from the relative breakthrough of All of A Sudden I Miss Everyone – an album that broke the top one hundred in charts on both sides of The Atlantic – Texan four-piece Explosions In The Sky return with their sixth studio LP, Take Care, Take Care, Take Care.
 
Right from the off, the six-track record (produced by the band alongside All of A Sudden's John Congleton) is an amalgamation of the Austin quartet's best qualities, a cacophony of beautifully arpeggiated melodies accented with countless layers of distortion. Album-opener 'Last Known Surroundings' is a perfect example of this: gradually building with delicate ease, the track suddenly explodes with a rhythm-fueled drive that lasts for the entirety of the eight-minute movement. Lead single 'Trembling Hands', meanwhile, as well as being the only song here under seven minutes in length, is comprised entirely of staccato rhythms that cut to the chase and make for a pounding anthem that's perfectly suited to the coming summer months.
 
There are, of course, moments of understated beauty on display too. Experimenting with all manner of electronic noises to further layer their ever-catchy guitar melodies, EITS have travelled even further outside their genre confines to craft something extremely cinematic. Album-closer 'Let Me Back In', for instance, begins with an almost Radiohead-like atmosphere of guitar swells and nondescript vocals (that's right, I said vocals), before giving way to a triumvirate of guitar hooks and drum patterns that simply beg for visual accompaniment. It is perhaps EITS's greatest achievement that they are able to create music that's so undoubtedly wide in scope; unlike many of their erstwhile musical peers, this is a band who continue to get the balance between style and substance just right.
 
In the context of the group's back catalogue, Take Care... both sounds and feels like a companion piece to 2004’s Friday Night Lights soundtrack, at least insofar as its delicate ambience and guitars echoing for miles make it a relatively accessible entry-point for new converts. Most importantly of all, however, it shows the band continuing to grow, unwilling to be contained by the generic post-rock template of LOUD/QUIET/LOUD/QUIET – although there is plenty of that as well.
 
A welcome return indeed.