Saturday, May 24, 2008

Silver Mt Zion @ The Grey Eagle Tonight!!!!!


Grey Eagle continues its run of bringing a respectable roster of national acts to town tonight with A Silver Mt Zion. Or Thee Silver Mt Zion, or even Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra La La Band.

Call them what you will, the Montreal collective seems to have finally outgrown the rather generic moniker of "Godspeed You Black Emperor sideproject". In fact, with Godspeed on what seems like permanent hiatus, both Silver Mt Zion as well as other offshoot bands like Do Make Say Think are evolving at something of a breakneck pace.

For someone like myself who missed the last couple SMZ releases, their new album "13 Blues for Thirteen Moons" is something of a radical departure from the band's earlier work. After multiple listens though it's not difficult to put to rest the spectre of expectation and embrace the new.

The most noticably different aspect SMZ's current incarnation is the emphasis on vocals and guitar riffage. The band previously specialized in densely complicated orchestral exorcises in tension and release which would often diverge into unexpected directions with minimal vocal chorus that was used sparingly and always in the background. We now get Efrim Menuck's jaggedly unpolished voice right up front delivering buzzsaw lamentations that cut right through the tension.
In some sense A Silver Mt Zion seems to have turned itself inside out. Instead of the repetitive elements anchoring the orchestra, the songs now build with layered deliberation becoming progressively more intense while the strings play and important backup role taking the main riffs to thrilling new heights.
With every song on the album breaking the 13 minute mark it's impossible to speak of Silver Mt Zion without using the words "epic" or "grand", but as breathtaking as these these songs may be they also posess a quality of introspection and more often than not, explosive episodes of quiet desperation.
With the upfront intimacy that a show at the Grey Eagle affords, this show could be not just a great performance but the emothional experiance of the season.