I’ve been in a musical rut for a few years now. My old music feels too immature (Streetlight Manifesto, Simple Plan, Less Than Jake… I can’t really relate to the “no one understands me” music anymore). Not much of the newer pop music has clicked. Honestly, the only new-to-me music I’ve enjoyed since 2020 has probably been the newer releases from The Ocean. They did a five-album series about the geologic periods and mass extinctions that hit oh so right when I would doom-walk around my neighborhood in 2020. (Albums: Precambrian; Paleozoic; Phanerozoic I; Phanerozoic II; Holocene). My god, my first listens of Holocene made me feel so alive.
I decided to use that as a jumping-off point. I did a little reddit searching, wrote down some artist names in my commonplace notebook, and hit up the library last Friday. They had three CDs by Explosions in the Sky - one of the few bands on my post-rock/post-metal/prog-rock list that existed in the library catalog. I popped on All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone while at work… WOW. First album of this journey has been an absolute bullseye. This album sounds like a tragic indie video game soundtrack. It’s The End of the Ocean with graying hair. Atmospheric but lyrical, I love the piano motifs.
It seems their most famous album, according to Wikipedia, is The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place (2003), which my local library didn’t have a copy of. It also seems to be a good “kick-off” album for exploring whatever we want to call this genera, according to this diagram on reddit. I know one of these bands well (Tycho) and a few are on my to-listen list (ISIS, Cult of Luna, Pelican).
You’ll want to go to Reddit to view the full-size diagram
Running Album Wishlist
The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place (2003) - Explosions In The Sky