From West Texas

After an Ebay and Craigslist adventure I secured a couple of tickets to the sold-out Explosions in the Sky concert at the 930 Club.

What better way to warm up my St. Pat’s than with an early concert by one of my favorite bands?
I hit the 930 Club early to catch the opening acts since word on the street was that they were pretty interesting. I’m glad I did.

Eluvium is a one-man band. Using electronics and a guitar he orchestrated sweeping sound-scapes set to images of birds (or bats) projected on stage. This was music to accompany the first rays of sunlight piercing the cloud cover of a thousand-year nuclear winter. Eluvium’s music while full of conflict was uplifting and beautiful.

The Paper Chase were pretty fun but utterly disposable. Their sound is chaotic, angular, post-punk with amusing lyrics. They put on a high energy show but went on a little long in my book. Mainly because they didn’t exactly fit with the night’s theme of soaring instrumentals.

Explosions in the Sky pretty much blew the doors off the place. Literally.

Whoever was mixing the show must have maxed out the sound board because even the quiet parts of their songs were loud as heck. An effect which added greatly to the many crescendos of the night, but erased all traces of subtlety in EITS’ music.

The band played a great mix of their discography splitting the set into three acts composed of restraint, build-up, and then epic guitar-power release. I remember at one point during the set when I was so impressed, so blown away by what I was listening to, that I couldn’t imagine how anyone could dislike what EITS were doing. I even made note of the time as if I were a doctor calling out the time-of-death on musical cynicism – it was 9:38.

NPR recorded and archived all three bands on their awesome concert series website. I just finished listening to the EITS recording and oddly enough it sounds a lot different than the experience in person. Equally good however as the recording brings back a lot of the subtlety that the live setting lacked. Maybe the recording had a different engineer than the club did? Either way, the live EITS mp3 makes for a beautiful listen. Check it out!

Originally published on March 21, 2007.

I thought this was the best EITS performance I would ever see but somehow they topped it when I saw them from the front-front row of Radio City Music Hall a few years later and then again at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin TX in 2012. They are a magical band.