10. For Shoah

First published in Plan B #31, March 2008.

Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band – 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons (Constellation)

A question: how long can one keep up despair before choosing death? For how long does one tolerate the law of diminishing returns before abandoning the whole farce? It’s been over a decade since the first Godspeed You Black Emperor! LP, but its members are still making records for crushed souls and thwarted revolutionaries. So, on opener (discounting the 12 tracks and 75 seconds of metallic drone that comes before it) ‘1,000,000 Died To Make This Sound’, Efrim Menuck roundly declares all capitalist culture morally abhorrent, and even finds “the pretence of their awful gardens” too much to take: “Give me a goddamn shovel/I’ll dig my own damn hole.” Ho hum.

Menuck’s voice spends much time front and centre of the mix, to the record’s detriment: he slurs, wails and emphasises random syllables, in order to leave the listener in no doubt that he is ‘impassioned’, or whatever. The lyrics when recognisable, pressgang impenetrable symbolism – “There’s ravens in the gun-trees!” goes the title track’s refrain – in the service of Clash-simple protest – they unfortunately stoop to slogans like “I JUST WANT SOME ACTION!” and “NO HEROES ON MY RADIO!” – and killjoy paranoiac misanthropy. The music – well-recorded, churning electric rock grooves of varying intensity, with occasional string embellishments – is a far cry from both the ethereal tenderness and excoriating, heaven-sent noise of their first two albums, or GYBE!’s magnum opus, Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven. The hazy, heart-breaking drift of their earlier work, and the truly communal singing they patented on 2003’s “Thee Broken Satellites Gather & Sing: This Is Our Punk Rock”, suited Menuck’s vocals – an acquired taste – and the group’s anguished politics much better.

It’s not that it’s actually bad – just… disappointing. When I first came into contact with Godspeed! and SMZ, they immediately became Important Bands – you know, the kind who prescribe and transcribe your entire worldview; their mixture of fragile sorrow, ecstatic intensity, and very personal collectivist politics provided a conduit for my own disgust and rage, and a glimpse of salvation in a world I hated. Maybe it’s simply that I no longer want to punch through glass windows, or tear my own skin off: I’ve become used to the world (and a little numb to its horrors). I can’t be bothered destroying myself and any lingering hope I have for humanity in pursuit of useless protest. SMZ would probably argue that such a direct, angry approach is necessary after “six years of their wars”; but protest and despair are two sides of the same coin, and protest is only made on the assurance it will make no difference. The Gnostic, heavenly light of the first GYBE! records, promising to sweep away the world of exchange like so much bad scenery, is almost entirely buried here.

There are glimpses, though: the enormous coda to the title track – hypnotic riffs, frantically sawing strings, Efrim’s desperate, mechanical shouts straining against the bounds of technology; the raging, electric-storm guitar and manic free percussion that opens ‘Black Waters Blowed/Engine Broke Blues’; and the spare ‘Blindblindblind’, which builds into a group-sung chant – “Some! Hearts! Are! True!” they sing, over and over, finding new ways around the words, as if this incantation, if uttered with enough conviction, will prove true: the world will live again. As the instruments drop out and the voices continue, ever more emboldened, my heart leaps, my breath goes. This was what I came for: true love, again.