Pitchfork

Thee Silver Mountain Reveries (formerly The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band with Choir, and before that, simply A Silver Mt. Zion) is, if you want to get down to brass tacks, a different permutation of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the central hub from which the spokes of the Canadian post-rock scene seem to radiate. One of the most common accusations leveled at Godspeed is that their music is "just one long crescendo," and it's a complaint I've never understood. For one, "crescendo," when understood to mean "a peak," describes the moment when the music is at its most powerful, emphatic and cathartic: the aural equivalent of an orgasm. If this is the case, then hey, an hour-long orgasm doesn't sound like anything to gripe about to me (in theory, I should add).

But moreover, while "crescendo" often describes "a peak" in modern usage, that isn't what it means. "Crescendo" connotes not just the climax, but the climax and the entire slow-burning build toward it. It's not just the money shot, but all the foreplay and thrusting that preceded it. Calling a climax a crescendo is like calling a birth a pregnancy, and slow, dramatic intensification is pretty much Godspeed's modus operandi-- to deride them for it is to admit that they fulfill the terms of their artistic engagement, and is about as redundant as inveighing against a fantasy/adventure film for the implausibility of its plot.

Whatever the word means to you, crescendo-haters who like Godspeed's overall style but can't get down with the bombast might look more favorably on Thee Silver Mountain Reveries' Pretty Little Lightning Paw EP. The disc benefits from many of Godspeed's concrete tactics (diverse instrumentation, nested political polemics, long compositions with several distinct "movements"), as well as their more abstract ones (a certain incandescence, a tension between beauty and dread, a sense of light falling like rain). And there's nary a blatant crescendo-- be it build or climax-- to be found.

Pretty Little Lightning Paw also profits from canning the aggressively off-key Choir who belted out discordant shapenote harmonies all over their previous LP, This is Our Punk-Rock, Thee Rusted Satellites Gather + Sing. Of course, the jarring nature of the choir was intentional, and no doubt absolutely salient in terms of the album's overall political and aesthetic program. But it also frustratingly obscured what was otherwise entirely lovely music, and soon enough emoted the record right out of my collection.' Rather, Pretty Little Lightning Paw wafts through its four movements with equanimity and grace.

I've always felt "post-rock" to be a misnomer when applied to Godspeed, who seem more "post-classical" or "pre-something-heretofore-undreamt-of" than anything else, and The Silver Mountain Whatevers have generally followed suit. But the first track on Pretty Little Lightning Paw, "More Action! Less Tears!", is exactly what post-rock would be in a perfect world where words meant what they actually mean. It opens with a shout ("Hello? There will be a meeting of the action committee in five minutes!"), followed by flag-waving rock guitars and a production value straight off of GBV's Bee Thousand, which lends the record a startling initial momentum uncommon to the genre. In other words, it sounds like something it would take Godspeed half an hour to build up to.

Like the remainder of the EP, "Microphones in the Trees" features Efrim Menuck's quavering, paranoid singing about "cameras in the sky" and such; on this track his voice is modulated with an echo effect within a glacial piano/bass/guitar figure that repeatedly accumulates and sheds feedback and choral harmonies (small doses, small doses) in a 10-minute quest for cacophony. The title track sounds like a slowed-down, vintage RZA beat, all fractured minor-key shapes and syncopated drums. It sounds how a reflected neon glow on freshly fallen snow looks, and should excite those who pine for the days before Black Heart Procession went bossanova. And finally, "There's a River in the Valley Made of Melting Snow" closes the EP with Menuck's most confident singing yet, stretched out over buzzing, staticky sheets of guitar.

I don't know what Thee Silver Mountain Reveries have in store for their next recording, but I think they're on the right track with this one. Less is more, and if "a crescendo" must mean "a peak," that still doesn't mean it has to be overly dense or noisy-- if you were to drop a straight pin for an hour, then dropping a ten-penny nail might be all the release you need.