This Will Destroy You
's sophomore full-length finds the post-rockers moving glacial soundscapes to the foreground and doing away with overdriven amps to make a more subdued album. For a while there, it was as if bands in the post-rock scene were in a competition to see who could achieve the most epic, monolithic burst. It was only a matter of time before it would reach a limit. Only a few weeks earlier, fellow Texans
Explosions in the Sky
released
Take Care, Take Care, Take Care
, a record that found them scaling back and swelling slowly over the course of six tracks.
TWDY
downplay things even more, and go almost completely ambient on
Tunnel Blanket
. With its icy, synthesized arrangements,
"Glass Realms"
could be a
Brian Eno
track, and
"Reprise"
has more in common with
Sigur Ros
than
Mogwai
. This is the type of music found in dreams. The album takes shape very slowly, with each song subtly outdoing the last, and it isn't until the halfway point that a drumbeat becomes tangible. Finally, in the second to last song,
"Black Dunes,"
there is a climax with reverberated cymbal crashes and fat bass tones, before the hypnotic strings of
"Powdered Hand"
bring everything down to a lovely lull. Good proof that tranquil moments are just as powerful as deafening ones. ~ Jason Lymangrover