Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band - "13 Blues for Thirteen Moons"

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band - 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons (Constellation 2008)

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band - 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons / Constellation

Where are any of us going with post-rock anymore? Increasingly, the musical community finds itself wandering down blind alleys and subterranean Turkish baths struggling to find new territory to cover to make it post-rock, to make it post-anything, or simply to make it bearable for themselves. Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mogwai knew. We could've called the whole thing off with Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada and been done with it. Maybe going as late as Panopticon would be acceptable.

But here are Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band still forging away on the cooling irons of post-rock corpses past. 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons is the collective's fifth album since their formation in 1999. One of the critical reasons for Montreal's veritable explosion on the world stage, Silver Mt. Zion has had a fruitful history full of lengthy tracks (and equally lengthy titles) that were originally intended to further Godspeed guitarist Efrim Menuck's understanding of how to score music. 2005's Horses in the Sky was the last attempt, and even though the punchlines were already in place by then, Silver Mt. Zion defied boredom by finally utilizing that tool which Godspeed had strived to avoid for so long: their own voice.

For this album, Menuck and company have fully embraced vocals, a complete turn-around from a decade ago when politically charged clips would've sufficed. You wouldn't know that from the first dozen songs on here because, as it so happens, each of them are 11 seconds long: One elongated, unrecognized (in the liner notes), untitled drone broken up on its way to the four songs that form the white-hot nucleus loaded up at the end of this release.

It is worth noting at this point that none of these songs are new; each has been presented to the public over the course of the last three years, and while live album Fuck You Drakulas sits patiently waiting for the right moment to be released, Silver Mt. Zion carry on with what Constellation Records has described as "heavy." Thankfully, they are right.

Of course you knew that, though. Aren't all post-rock albums supposed to feel at least a little hefty? But this isn't heavy in the weigh, sorry, way you'd expect. The music without vocals would've still been spectacular on its own (and evidence of the tense string section during the title-track is proof enough), but Menuck's higher pitched vocals add an interesting foil that brings a human element to a genre steeped in Zeusian vocabulary. Thundering guitars, towering drums, you've heard it all before. But have you heard it like this? "The hangman's got a hard-on," he sings with the music at its absolute quietest. Fade it all back in. Post-rock, no. Classical, no. Film score, no. Yes. No. Aye. Hey. No, I don't think you have.

Echo the vocals, swell the usual chorus and come back to earth. It's like Silver Mt. Zion have ripped pages out of Win Butler's neon bible and thrown it right in to the Montreal melting pot they signify so well. Increasingly, as the plucked strings of "Blindblindblind" rise up to close the album on a poignant note, you realize that 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons is not just the latest ex-Godspeed side-project release (an incredibly naive judgment); it is not simply another Silver Mt. Zion album to complete the handful; it is Montreal. I've used this argument before - that a single album can define a city - and perhaps that cheapens the argument. But a few years removed from Apologies to the Queen Mary and a few more removed from F#A#∞, now might be the best time to take in the full effect of what's happening up there.

From the alien(eight) outsiders dug into the hills of Mount Royal to the most visible insiders lurking around La Rue St. Denis, Silver Mt. Zion are capturing it as it's happening in long, vibrant scrawls. There have been better post-rock albums and maybe there are still great post-rock albums to come, but this group isn't interested in defying convention. It is interested in shaping that cooling iron into the likeness of the city it came from, wedged between rivers and tides, with a giant fucking sphere its most notable landmark. They have a science museum in there, you know. It's kid's stuff, but at the top you can see half of Montreal at a time, see it all, captured, as it's happening. Long, vibrant scrawls of blue in a baker's dozen. I hope to be fortunate enough to return one day.