I've said it before and I will say it again: it takes a lot to get me interested in "classic" post-rock these days. I won't rehash my complaints here but suffice it to say that I think that thirty odd years of build ups and crescendos is more than enough. And yet, there are still bands operating within the space who have, for lack of a better word, "the juice". Even if the track structures are not exactly revolutionary, the passion and drive of the group makes the good ol' formula beat with invigorated force. Winter At Sea is a phenomenal example. Made up of members from other blog-favored groups (like Flies Are Spies From Hell and Din Of Celestial Birds), their music is steeped with a sense of melancholic loss and dogged hope that I find hard to resist. Head on down to listen to Hearts below to see what I mean.
Oh boy. Hearts is a one track, twenty minutes journey into the depths of a murky ocean or rather the decrepit structures that still eke out a life at its shore. The classic post-rock components are all there - the tremolo picked, delay-heavy guitars, the ponderous drums, the sonorous bass. Everything is likewise arranged into the classic post-rock structure, the slow build up and eventual catharsis of the five pieces contained within this one track/album. But something just clicks, you know? Like I said above, there is a passion here, a drive. It's not just familiar notes on a page or mechanical instructions being carried out. It's a performance.
As always, I can't really tell you why this works where other music like it doesn't. But I can show it you by playing the music itself. That's part of the beauty and challenge of music, right? It is unmediated. It speaks to us directly. Or not. This kind of post-rock, for me, these days, either speaks to me in this fashion or not at all. And Winter At Sea do, piercing me to the core with their deft approach to sorrow, memory, persistence, and hard-won triumph.