The Brag

Explosions In The Sky
Lock In And Let Your Mind Go
By Alasdair Duncan

Texan instrumental rockers Explosions In The Sky craft songs that unfold like stories – lengthy and exquisite narratives with evocative guitar sounds and crescendos of emotion. Guitarist Michael James feels that storytelling is a big part of what his band do, and that means getting the titles just right. “The title
of the song is kind of our one chance to tell people with words what the song means to us,” he says. “Being instrumentals, the meanings of the songs are open to a lot of interpretation – you can talk to 20 different people and hear 20 different stories of what it might be about. The titles are our one chance to put our own little stamp on the songs, so we think really hard about them.”

Explosions In The Sky rose to fame after writing the score for the high school football film Friday Night Lights in 2004, and have been steadily building an international fanbase ever since. Their sixth album, this year’s Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, peaked at number 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 upon release, a sure sign that they’re edging ever-closer to mainstream acceptance. “It shows that there are people who are interested in what we’re doing,” James says of this success. “We write ten-minute instrumental rock songs, which is not the most immediately accessible form of music, but it’s encouraging to know that people are into us – it shows that they like different things. They’re looking for things that are new and out of the ordinary.”

James is especially proud that it was Take Care which scaled such heights, given that it represented an all-new way of working for his band. “For every album up until this one, we always wrote the songs specifically to be played live,” he explains. “We didn’t want to record anything that we couldn’t play perfectly in front of a live crowd. We sort of abandoned that idea with this new album, though. We had a lot more textures and layers and different sonic qualities, so it actually took us a while to learn [to play] these songs live. It’s always been easy to rehearse the songs in the past, and this time around it was a lot more work – but it was a really interesting process, to take these songs and try and work out how to play them.”

With most bands, the role of ‘leader’ defaults to the singer, but for Explosions In The Sky, whose music is built around three guitarists, it’s a far more democratic process – for better and for worse. “We disagree on that, and pretty much every other creative aspect of the band,” James says with a laugh. “That’s just how it is – we all have pretty clear artistic ideas that we’re trying
to bring to the table, and sometimes they just aren’t greeted with the reception that you want. It can be frustrating to let go of ideas that you like and that nobody else does, but that’s just how we do it. There have been tonnes of songs and titles that we’ve argued over, but at the end of the day, it has to be unanimous. That’s just how we work.”

Explosions will bring their live show to Australia this month, and I ask James just what goes through his head when he’s on stage with the band – does he ever find himself drifting off into the songs? “You have to be pretty engaged in what you’re playing,” he says, “but my mind will go with the songs sometimes. My mind wanders, images appear while we’re playing, and it can be a pretty meditative experience sometimes, playing live. You can lock in and let your mind go.”

What: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care is out through Spunk Records
With: Charge Group
Where: The Metro Theatre
When: Sunday December 11