This Will Destroy You
Tunnel Blanket

Is it ever possible that every time we approach listening to a post-rock album, we inevitably fall into the usual debate about the fate of a genre that by definition should constantly lean forward, leaving behind every mannerist crystallization, but instead systematically does the opposite?

I'd say it's time to resign ourselves and start looking at post-rock as a movement that, like punk, represented a moment of undeniable rupture in the history of rock music, only to institutionalize, consolidate in its clichés, and rather discover its immortality in the ability to infiltrate elsewhere and contaminate other musical worlds, from jazz to electronics, passing through hardcore and metal.

It's difficult, I understand, and it takes all the class and "extraordinariness" of a group like Mogwai to maintain their credibility over the years, to survive and come out (almost) unscathed from the crossfire of increasingly snobbish criticism and an increasingly demanding audience. So what can be said about a band like This Will Destroy You, who entered the recording market in 2006 with the EP "Young Mountain", I'd say out of time, in years when the movement had little left to say that was new, in years when the bands of the first wave seemed to have already given everything in terms of innovation, while the rest of the scene seemed to follow them wearily, unable to reproduce their glories nor to give a credible follow-up.

But if post-rock in its more traditional form (my god, what an oxymoron!) seems to be slowly extinguishing year after year, it is also true that its language survives by traversing shores outside the more strictly indie boundaries, giving new vitality, opening new evolutionary paths to genres that meanwhile appear even more gravely stuck in the quagmire of stylistic immobility.

The strength of This Will Destroy You lies precisely in tracing a personal evolutionary groove and succeeding in opening a difficult pass halfway between post-rock and that world that post-rock itself has over time come to contaminate.

Today, with "Tunnel Blanket", the Texan quartet (led by guitarists Chris King and Geremy Galindo and completed by a very focused Alex Bhore, newly added behind the drums, and by the fundamental Donovan Jones, who splits between bass and keyboards, contributing significantly to the economy of the new sound) continues with perseverance its path of stylistic definition, taking a running start from the self-titled album of 2008 (followed by two short works - the split with Lymbyc Systym "Field Studies" of 2009 and the recent EP "Moving on the Edge of Things"), but raising the bar by a span, crafting a mature album, reasoned, that knows how to make use of a measured employment of electronic components and the never-invasive additions of a chamber ensemble, and that even dares to breach the limits of the formidable drone-music, but without losing either that physical impact that has characterized the band since its origins, nor the undeniable ability to generate vivid visions and provoke strong emotions in the less severe listener willing to abandon themselves to a listening free of prejudices and oriented towards the substance of things.

"Tunnel Blanket", while safeguarding a writing method that once again places its focus on the alternation between fullness and voids, therefore chooses to tread the path of element extreme, heavy moments and refining the "light" ones, thus building a sound monument that manages to combine auteur ambient and post-metal. And this is thanks to the undeniable professionalism gained over time, to great clarity of intent, and the humility of those who know that the challenge before them is arduous: a dark album this "Tunnel Blanket", at times gloomy and threatening, light years away from indie reminiscences or languid progressions of an emotionality relegated to a strictly adolescent universe. Within it, Sigur Ros and Neurosis coexist harmoniously, expansions and explosions; cosmic music and field recording on one side, sludge and guitar explosions of unusual heaviness on the other.

Moreover, I like this new America that knows how to dust off an emotionality that seemed dormant and that today re-emerges forcefully from the branches of a jagged pragmatism that has always characterized (at least in rock and metal) these lands of hick cowboys. Thus, This Will Destroy hits the target, with monastic patience, scratching where necessary, but essentially abandoning themselves to contemplative, fresh, cultured at times, certainly divinely crafted music, in which the inner turmoil flows into the slow movements of a blind and beautiful nature, relentless as well as generous, in other words: outside of any ethical and moral connotation. Because here beauty and degradation, despair and vitality coexist in the balance of forces that contrast but at the same time complete each other. To use a cliché: nothing is destroyed, nothing is created, everything transforms. But in this, I do not refer only to the musical language used (a successful mix of elements), but also to the "modus evolvendi" of the album itself, teeming in its imperceptible progress.

Take, for example, the twelve minutes of "Little Smoke", which has the honor of opening the album: it starts on tiptoe, among impalpable and rarefied sounds and imperceptible arpeggios that intertwine with deep basses, then proceeds with successive stratifications, first and subsequently the "crack" that splits the track in half, an avalanche that after a few minutes of stillness nervously collapses on the listener, suspending them astonished in a tragic fall, like finding oneself spectator and actor in the silent slide of huge stone slabs that slide down the steep slope of titanic mountains into equally deep seas. In the turmoil that constitutes the central body of the track, it finally seems to hear "human" cries, the only vocal element of an absolutely instrumental album, something that reminds me very closely of the first work of the incomparable Kayo Dot, or the Mono from "Are You There?". And precisely the Mono, their panicked, ancestral, epic strength, their powerless gaze in the face of a sovereign nature to fear and idolize, are continually evoked throughout this hour of excellent music, and in particular in the third track "Communal Blood", also chosen as a leading single, that manages to involve despite its growth not leading to anything striking (but after all, it is known, by now post-rock offers nothing but crescendos or false crescendos).

However, to savor once again the violence that had assailed the first track, you will have to wait for the penultimate track "Black Dunes", demonstrating how the band is averse to granting easily engaging solutions: an opening worthy of the most evocative Pink Floyd (those of "Echoes" to be clear), and then the creak that leads to the final collapse. While indeed the Texans confirm themselves as undisputed masters in building incredible walls of sound, it is good to remember that in this "Tunnel Blanket", Our prefer to focus on a sound search that prioritizes sound equalization, harmonization studies, incremental overlapping, attention to detail.

The result is that "Tunnel Blanket" ends up suffering a little in its central part, a portion of the album that goes on to weigh down a musical experience that can be accused, if the ear is inattentive, of prolixity, redundancy, excessive self-indulgence, or formal fussiness: a magmatic bubbling in which the band loves to proceed unhurriedly and build extraordinary scenarios worthy of tacit (and powerless) contemplation.

It is therefore the environmental inclination, the tendency towards a painful implosion, the dreamy gaze into a world we cannot dominate that prevail in this album that raises its head in a year, 2011, marking a distance of almost fifteen notches from the release of a seminal work for the genre such as "Young Team" and that today remains unequaled as an ideal-type of the entire genre: in this context, This Will Destroy You knows how to look with dignity at the unfolding musical landscape around them, choosing the hardest path, not falling into temptations and showing themselves rigorous, strict, and not inclined to grant easy emotions (as is often the case within the genre), ultimately giving us an album that can only be fully appreciated after numerous listens.