[Photos/Text by Andrew Parks]
We’ve always been on the fence about the post-Friday Night Lights era of Explosions in the Sky. On one hand, we’re happy the boys are making decent money by scoring TV shows, shifting 11,000 albums in a week, and drawing a crammed Central Park crowd after a decade together. And sure enough, the group’s SummerStage show sounded spectacular last night, filling the muggy air with melancholic meditations on life, death and peak/valley dynamics.
With that in mind, there’s something missing in the more expansive version of EITS’ stage show, and that is the purely visceral–and at times, violent–sensations that they produce in small clubs, where everything is magnified by claustrophobic acoustics and an obliterated band/fan barrier. It’s the kinda thing you literally feel via the sudden climax of “A Poor Man’s Memory” or the sputtering flare-ups of “Yasmin the Light.” (By the way, can you tell what our favorite Explosions album is?) So if we have anything to suggest as our favorite Texans enter their 11th year, it’s to give us one more lengthy North American tour that plows through places like Bowery Ballroom and Emo’s. Until then, we’ll leave you with the following setlist and photos…
Explosions in the Sky @ Central Park SummerStage, 6.30.09:
Yasmin the Light
The Birth and Death of the Day
A Song For Our Fathers
Your Hand in Mine
Greet Death
Snow and Lights
A Poor Man’s Memory
Catastrophe and the Cure
The Only Moment We Were Alone
