Getting Started with Post-Rock (1999-2004)

The Newer Bands in a Young and Thriving Genre of Music

May 12, 2009

With epic, suggestive guitars and a pulsating rhythm section, post-rock can be atypically beautiful. This is a guide to the later music of the genre.

Post-rock may seem like a confusing title, but it’s just a way of saying that a band is using rock instrumentation to create atypical rock music. Instead of chunking out powerchords, the guitars will typically use delay and tremolo to craft atmospheric tones and melodies. The rhythm section focuses more on a hypnotizing effect, doing away with the traditional rock and roll backbeat.

Though post-rock has origins in krautrock, minimalistic classical music, and early spacerock, the safest starting-point for the style is the early 1990s, with bands like Slint and Talk Talk being named as innovators. Listed below are four later songs by different bands that have taken the original idea of avant-garde music with rock instruments and developed it into a style that is more grand and sweeping.

“Christmas Steps” by Mogwai (1999)

This epic song comes near the end of the bleak Come On Die Young album. A single guitar starts the song off with a variation on a clean melody, a second guitar joining it nearly a minute into the song. By the time the bass comes in, there is enough delayed guitar coming through the speakers that it seem unreasonable to add a third, higher part to the mix. That’s just what happens, though, and the pulsing melody line that sits atop the rest creates a foundation-of-sound to be built upon.

The guitars do so with quarter note downpicking when the bass drops out. As the bass comes thudding back in nearly four minutes into the song, the instruments gradually increase the tempo until the drums can enter in a solid beat as the guitars do a syncopated, limp-wrist flick back and forth on squeaky-clean telecasters.

The distortion comes in powerful, but not overpowering. The spacey solo, on the other hand, obliterates all. Seemingly out of nowhere, the song drops back to the previous riff, and then – peeling off yet another layer – goes to a clean section of interwoven guitars. As the last cymbal hit decays, it gives way to buried layers of guitar swells and echos. The guitars and bass continue the wind down, easing the listener away from an epic rise and fall before a wavering violin carries everything away.

“Greet Death” by Explosions in the Sky (2001)

One of the prettiest bands in post-rock (and certainly of all music), Explosions in the Sky started their Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever album with the crushing “Greet Death.”

The amplifiers rumble at the start, creating a feedback ruckus that rattles the snare, an apparition drummer. The whole band kicks in and starts stomping on a chord, utilizing the trademark pulse of post-rock music. The melodic theme of the song bounces, but not in a pop music sort of way: it goes down a hallway, side-to-side, door-to-door, trying to escape.

Everything deteriorates into noise near the half-way point, perhaps the point at which the song greets death. The build that follows isn’t a typical build to a release, but a build to a beginning. Disjointed guitar pluck their way together as the drums and bass urge them on. The rally works, and the song reaches full volume and full energy after swelling in and out and deciding on in. The slow chord sweeps at the end are lush and full, and when everything deteriorates again, it does it for good, as all things must.

“16.12” by MONO (2004)

The sound of a flowing body of water and a violin duo set the mood for this lead-off track from Walking Cloud and Deep Red Sky, Flag Fluttered and Sun Shined. As they fade, swelling guitars move from speaker to speaker, harmonizing in whispers. A pulsing rhythm on a single note comes to the forefront as cymbals parallel the swelling of the guitars, rolling softly and then on the verge of breaking.

Almost unnoticeably, a build begins to happen as the bass plods through the song, taking over for the light chug of the guitar. Inconspicuously at first, a guitar snakes in and ascends, descends. The cymbals continue to do nothing but go up and down until the drummer comes down hard on the cymbals and lets them die fast, pounding on the toms until the entire band can rejoice as if on the top of a mountain, the ascending guitar now unable to be ignored as the bass abrasively thumps in the background behind swirls of noisy guitar.

As the band reaches the bottom of the mountain, the drummers join the bass in its punches and finally collapse. The guitars feedback together as the bass crawls around and the cymbals slow to a halt as if moving by the whispers of the opening guitar lines.

These songs show a difinitive move to longer songs that have a distinctive rise and fall to them. From Slint's early noises and roots in punk rock, bands like MONO and Explosions in the Sky have formed a style of music that builds a song around a single, evolving arc. As music itself continues to evolve, post-rock itself is more than capable of staying ahead of the curve.

The copyright of the article Getting Started with Post-Rock (1999-2004) in Rock Music is owned by Ryan Werner. Permission to republish Getting Started with Post-Rock (1999-2004) in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.