The Breakdown
While much contemporary music of today seems required to focus on the ‘me’ some artists continue to probe wider into the things that ‘we’ do collectively, the injustices, the inhumanities, the inequalities. Since co-founding the seminal Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the agit post rock assembly Thee Silver Mount Zion, Efrim Manuel Menuck has been engaged in such difficult but necessary considerations and thirty years on he remains intent to continue. A new GY!BE statement may be due in October but before that Menuck is agitating as part of a new collab-combo WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN (or WAWBARC between friends).
This group’s opening salvo, the album ‘NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER’ is just out on Constellation and in no way is it simply a precursor or prologue to anything forthcoming. Menuck is a contributor to the WAWBARC quartet alongside guitarist Mat Ball of BIG|BRAVE plus Jonathan Downs and Patch One, past members of the avant folk-rock band Ada and the music which this foursome generate has its own significance.
As usual in the creatively wired post-rock community, the members of WAWBARC have previously connected. During their formative stage Matthieu Ball’s main band BIG I BRAVE made an impression on Menuck when they opened for Thee Silver Mt. Zion way back in 2014 and from there regularly landed support slots with live Godspeed as well as Mt. Zion. The kinship continued into the studio with Menuck recording BIG|BRAVE’s second album ‘Au De La’ in 2015. As for Jonathan Downs and Patch One, their illusive experimental folk group Ada also recorded their self-titled and sadly final collection with Menuk in 2015 at his Thee Hotel2Tango studio.
The ‘NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER’ album has emerged from an accumulation of musical imagining captured by Menuck and Ball during studio time spent escaping the sustained grip of Montreal winters. The music at its core reflects bleakness but, as Menuck emphasises, a stare at dystopia experienced from a distance through the 24/7 newsfeed. That’s a fine line which sonically Jonathan Downs and Patch One have helped to draw, coming in later to the process and layering their perspectives on the Menuck/ Ball nascent song-scapes.
The depth and cohesiveness that WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN achieve as a recording ensemble resonates from the outset. A Cormac McCarthy, ‘The Road’ ravaged city is revealed in Rats and Roses, described by Menuck’s vocal poetry and framed within the band’s searingly tense soundtrack. From the scuttle of electronic fragments a warning pulse skulks into earshot before the crescendo of swelling synths and sustain-guitars intensifies. The impact is profound as Menuck’s sinewy voice grows more desperate, focusing on the minute detail of small lives amongst the “sunscreen and a dangling radiator”, “bloody wads, crimson tissue” and “cats that purr no more”.
From this graphic scene setting the narrative of ‘NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER’ appears to widen. Tremble Pour Light feels spacious, a rolling lullaby with chiming melody sung with a Gira-toned soft authority. The sighing guitar arcs, the gentler pulse points to weary resignation at the malaise. Perhaps the conversation the song suggests is between different viewers, “the last living boss” and the “manager of the manager” looking out at the meltdown but less scathed by it? The album’s title track which follows, soars symphonically, an epic avalanche of guitars heaving in unison through some all-conquering chord progressions and goth-blessed vocals. “We Are Hauling Trauma” goes the anthem like a refrain from a space-age pirates’ shanty.
WAWBARC do ease back during their opening quartet of tracks with the hymnal, soothing kosmische of Uncloudy Days and the recognition that “there’s no good but the good we make ourselves”. To say that resolution is being offered here is too simplistic but maybe there is some proposal that the fabric of hope is ever present. Not that the themes and music of ‘NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER’ ever depend on clear contrasts. The songs on the album map our shifting impressions, complex tensions within today’s world where, as Menuck recognises, “we watch horror unfolding from afar, unable to do anything concrete to change it.”
The two pivotal tracks which close the album explore such dilemmas incisively. Dangling Blanket From A Balcony (White Phosphorous) was sparked by the memory of the viral TV moment which recorded Michael Jackson holding his baby out over a hotel balcony, introducing the child to ‘adoring’ fans. The chilling bluesy moan of twanging guitars opens the song which sees Menuck honestly reflecting back, despairing at his own detachment as he carries on “making vague guitar shapes angry again that I haven’t quit smoking”. At the critical point the track veers into its seething coda, an alchemic forging of cavernous guitar cacophony and the metallic, ominous time ticking rhythm.
The metaphorical significance of white phosphorous returns in WAWBARC’s last word (Goodnight) White Phosphorous. The chemical warfare agent, still legal in its guise as a battleground smokescreen but lethal for those exposed to its impact, is a powerful symbol for the duplicity, wilful ignorance and inaction that Menuck returns to throughout this scarifying record. Fittingly this final track hovers mistily on its mellotron looping orchestration, an emotional folk epic tuned to these critical times.
The aftermath of taking in ‘NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER’ needs thought and contemplation. It’s an exceptional album where WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN combine their intricate sonic artistry to ensure that the listener’s engagement isn’t lost. You are compelled to stay with them through the delicate, difficult, disorientating and deceptive moments and each time you leave be reminded of your responsibilities.
Get your copy of ‘NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER’ by WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN from your local record store or direct from Constellation Records HERE
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