What pg.lost have crafted with their new record,
It’s Not Me, It’s You!”, is a post-rock album that should attract the attention of all the Explosions in the Sky whoring, A Silver Mt Zion loving, Yndi Halda worshipping post-rock kids ad get them to divert their attention away from Sigur Ros’ latest “breathtaking” record of the year candidate. While the transition from their first EP to their first full length has seen pg.lost grow a little more in line with traditional post-rock bands, they still like to defy what you expect them to do, and then do so in an absolutely deft manner.
The record begins innocuously with “The Day Shift”, which begins and ebbs like a normal post rock song would, the intro building towards its eventual “climax”, featuring one of the key pegs in the pg.lost cog: the distortion in a pg.lost song is done so wonderfully, you’ll begin to wonder if it really counts as distortion or if the music is just so beautiful you can’t hear it straight. As it begins to wind down, and you hear what would expectedly be the last few guitar notes being plucked, the song explodes into something AT LEAST five times louder and more epic than it was before. The dual guitars interweaving as the drums crash around, while the song ends in a heavily distorted solo.
Its hard to describe something so ***ing brilliant, people.
The middle of the album proceeds more tamely, with “Head High” being the only slightly weak point of the album, a generic, but still solid, track accompanied by cliché after cliché. Luckily Every song following lives up to the quality height of “The Day Shift”. While “Pascal’s Law” showcases that they can write a traditional post-rock songs and add various flairs to it (the 5 minutes of high tempo snare hits are delicious), as they abuse their echo pedals in its climax. “Maquina” continues on a similar path, except focuses more on its final crescendo than any sort of neat trickery.
What makes pg.lost different/so enthralling is that they couldn’t care less about making any part of their music “pretty”. Even in moments that should be glossy and stylized, such as the beginning of “Jonathan” where the extremely “dirty” (aka “we can mess with the levels on this part of the mix a lot!”) guitar riff makes the otherwise lush guitar work grounded, and at the same time making a fantastic juxtaposition between the ugliness of pg.lost’s work with the inherent beauty. The final song “Siren” is arguably the best song recorded this year, especially when taken in context of the album.
The most minimalist song in composition, “Siren” begins with little else other than a repeating guitar line and light synths. It goes on like this for nearly five minutes, every few moments taking the time to draw you back in with a individual guitar lick or shift in the song itself, until the drums kick in and the only true vocals on the album are heard. The song steadily builds throughout its duration, picking up steam and additional instruments until it finally erupts in a cacophony of guitars, drum crashes, and a piercing yell in the background. It is the perfect ending to the record, a release of energy that seems to have more in common with the likes of Envy than, lets say, Eluvium.
It’s Not Me, It’s You! is not for everyone, and it isn’t even for every post-rock fan. It’s a long, trying album seemingly designed to test your patience in short bursts, implanting you with the knowledge that yes, in time everything will make sense in any given song. Even when pg.lost turn into a “standard” post-rock band, they do it well and above most of their peers, and when pg.lost are *pg.lost*, they can challenge anyone else in the game when it comes to sheer talent and virtuosity. While the album may ride a little too heavily on the guitarists for many peoples tastes, it’s the best post-rock album I’ve heard since Yndi Halda’s
Enjoy Eternal Bliss, and I surely hope pg.lost can build upon this and craft an album great enough to land them in direct comparisons with the Sigur Ros’ and GY!BE’s of the world.
