Explosions in the Sky:Take Care, Take Care, Take Care

5.8/10 dropps
Record Label: Temporary Residence Limited

What fan of Explosions in the Sky can forget the beautiful crescendos and diminuendos of “Your Hand in Mine?” How could you resist the chilling wave that ran up your arm as the paradiddles of the snare drum slowly built up into an explosive layering of guitar upon guitar? It’s that type of movement that fans of Explosions in the Sky seek out so diligently. But after four years, the band hasn’t given us much to go off of. No EP, no single, no promotional video, not one thing to remind us of their presence. Until now.

But sadly, Take Care, Take Care, Take Care isn’t exactly that wave of excitement or tumultuous epic you might be expecting after their hiatus. It’s—more or less—an attempt to continue doing what has already been done.

Explosions have been doing it well, though. Since their inception in 1999, they’ve become somewhat of an icon of early 21^st Century post-rock. Those shimmering guitars and pistol-like drums are their trademark: a copyright stamp, if you will, like the Nike swoosh. And they don’t necessarily deviate from that trademark on Take Care, either. They just don’t expand on it. They don’t attempt to make it better.

That’s what’s so underwhelming about this album. When you listen to the quiet intro to “Human Qualities,” it sounds strangely familiar to the layers and rising action of “Your Hand in Mine” from eight years ago. Only this time around it has a lot less urgency to it, as if they’re simply settling with formulas and clichés. On their past releases, like The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, and even on their last 2007 release, All of a Sudden, I Miss Everyone, there was an unbridled quality of determination and passion to get through their songs. Not because you wanted them to end, but because you wanted to experience them all.

One of the few times that passion seems to well up again is on the short three-minute-thirty-second-long song, “Trembling Hands.” The tempo picks up so suddenly and their typical soft-loud dynamic is so devastated by the loud that you can’t decide if they planned it or if it just happened on accident. It’s spontaneous and an honest surprise.

Take Care has many of the same elements that made Explosions in the Sky so appealing and accessible from the beginning. It would seem to some people that they’re just indulging in what they’ve already done so well. What’s the problem then? Isn’t that like how The National took their sound in 2010’s High Violet and produced the hell out of it until it was near perfection?

Sort of. But Take Care feels too labored, too cliché, and too reliant on formula, rather than growth and excess, like fans have come to expect. It isn’t indulging; it’s settling. And Explosions in the Sky haven’t necessarily dropped out of the race, but they’re starting to sputter out. They used to be a band that grabbed you by the wrist and yanked you through post-rock’s most eye-opening moments, but Take Care drags along, uninterested and unfeeling. Like the doorway on the cover of the album, overgrown with vines, it’s not mysterious; it’s just uninviting.

–Robert Miller