A Thrill-Ver Mount Zion

It’s difficult for any side project to ever be judged in comparison to anything but their parent band, and when that band is Godspeed You! Black Emperor, it is probably never going to go well for you. Starting as A Silver Mt. Zion in 1999, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra are onto their seventh album and fifth name (including the memorable Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band with Choir). They are probably the best known of the numerous Godspeed side projects, and a lazy journalist might describe them as Godspeed without the experimenation. They do bring a few new things to the table though, with the addition of vocals in particular being an interesting innovation. They’ve taken a backseat for the last few years due to the Godspeed reunion, meaning that Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything is their first album since 2010. It’s definitely been worth the wait, and not just because of, you know, the Godspeed reunion.

Opening track, Fuck Off Get Free (for the Island of Montreal) opens with a grungey shoegaze with strings affair before descending into a hypnotic waltz. This all culminates in crushing, almost doom metal type guitar overlain with a screeching guitar wail and chanted vocals. It is an absolutely superb track. This is a track that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Godspeed record, and would have been a highlight on the most recent one. It also taught me that Montreal is on an island, which is useful knowledge... Austerity Blues has a slow start, building into a droning unrelenting guitar track that gets a bit much after a few minutes. As the crescendo hits, and the screeching guitar sings out a beautiful melody, you can’t help but fall into its trap. This leads to a big noise jam, before that dies off too and reemerges soft and becalmed. Take Away These Early Grave Blues is the first shorter track on the album (but still clocking in at slightly under seven minutes…) and as such, doesn’t really let up from its combination of distorted guitars and manic strings. That’s not to say I want it to though, especially as it’s followed by the actually quite short (two and a half minutes) Little Ones Run, a pretty piano led affair. What We Loved Was Not Enough has a similarly calm opening, and whilst it does build into something a bit louder, it doesn’t ever build into something that catches the imagination in the same way the earlier epics did. Rains Thru the Roof at the Grande Ballroom (for Rough Steez) is a bit of an oddity. Really quiet drumming underpins shimmering strings and a clinky piano. It’s definitely a change in style and it is a really nice end to the album.

This is a really great album. It’s certainly not a poor man’s Godspeed record. It is something a bit different (and not as good). Post-rock has been retreading a hell of a lot of ground in recent years, and this doesn’t exactly break the mould, but there’s a few novel ideas and it’s not as if the rest of it is run-of-the-mill. It’s also one of the better SMZ releases, and definitely a great place to start for any Godspeed fans who have never got round to listening. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to people who aren’t familiar with Godspeed, mostly because I’d be too busy recommending F#A#∞, but this is great, and the fact that I’ve fallen victim to my own opening sentence doesn’t change that.