COME ON DIE YOUNG

When I bought this album, I did it because I wanted to explore that most unknown of genres (to me) that was post-rock. I didn't own any cd by any of the bands listed here as post-rock so I chose to buy a few from the most well-rated groups I could find in the archives. That's how I end with Godspeed you Black Emperor, Sigur Ros and Mogwai in my hands. Now, with GYBE and SR I found what I was looking for, but with Mogwai I just couldn't find anywhere their best rated album, so I had to purchase this one. So, what can I say about my first post-rock experience?

I still haven't had one.

Or that I think after listening to this album. For, if THIS is how all post-rock sounds like, I'm in for a dissapointment. So I choose to trust that this was just an unlucky bad purchase. I keep on believing that all the praise for GYBE and SR is deserved. With mogwai, on the other hand, I think I just made a mistake. A mistake because I should have waited and get another one of their releases online, instead of rushing and buying this pretty boring record which could be giving post-rock a bad name.

The problem is not that the music is bad, for it isn't. The problem is that the music is too repetitive, too low-note, too low-volume, always the SAME. What you get with CODY is a colection of some of the most depressed music you'll ever hear... I mean, I've heard Radiohead's OK Computer a few days before, and that album felt like A JOYOUS FESTIVAL after having listened to this suicide-attempt of a record (come on, the name of the album is COME ON DIE YOUNG...). What you get with CODY is clean guitars played with little distorsion and in arpeggios and broken chords almost all the time, and ALL OF THE TIME with the utmost delicacy, as if the guitar player was afraid to break a string during the recording sessions; you get every other instrument in the same vein as the guitar: low volume (the drums are barely hearable all the way till the next-to-last song), and most of time is all instrumental. Proper singing you only get in "Cody", and like everything else in this record, done after having ingested plenty of tranquilizers. There's a little piano here and there, but never something that will get you interested in the music. This is just MOOD music, and the saddest mood at that. There's hardly any dynamics and tempo changes going on, and THAT's the major problem: some of the songs are actually decent, but when you are subjected to track after track after track of THE SAME TEMPO WITH THE SAME INTENSITY (I would say it's 60 bpm played molto pianissimo), it all gets boring, tiresome, not interesting at all.

The tracks? It's really quite a task having to remember any of them after just two listens, or after four, or after ten, because most of them are too SIMILAR. But I'll point out as the highlights (the word "high" sounds a little off-topic when talking about this from-the-gutter music) the first proper song (CODY) and, without a doubt the best and actually a pretty good number, Christmas Steps, which has (miracle!!) some intensity dynamics going on (there's actually a crescendo in the track), some cymbals (incredible) and some loud guitars (just impossible to believe). And maybe, just MAYBE, if you listen one track now, one song then, one song one day, one track another day, most of them would seem OK; the problem is hearing the whole thing IN ONE LISTEN. It's just difficult. It's just boring.

This is depressive music. This is sedated music. This sounds like a band of decent musicians getting high (I'd say getting LOW) on something and then pluggin' in the instruments to record an album. This would be so MUCH BETTER with just two or three tracks in a different tempo... Yes, I'm not asking for happy music! I'm just asking for music THAT DOESN"T SOUND THE SAME SPEED ALL THE TIME!!

Recommended for: people, like me, who like to get as many prog-albums as possible; prog lovers with a thing for depressing music; post-rock ultra-fans.

Not recommended for: Fans of really good albums, really good music; prog-lovers that still don't know post-rock: beware! This is not the best entrance into that genre!... But most of all, not recommended for people in the midst of a depression: after this, you may start looking for a bridge from where to jump...