How to describe the indescribable? What to do when there aren’t words precise enough to neatly label and understand? I’ve written before about this frustrating paradox in any kind of creative process, and I’ve known enough other writers and artists and musicians and actors to know that anyone half decent at their craft grapples with it too.
The indescribable is, after all, just about the only thing worth making art about: these gaps and caesuras in our comprehension. Sometimes we are lucky enough for these to be joyous and wonderful. More often than not, it’s a level of dread we hoped we’d never have to face. Godspeed You! Black Emperor come honest by this, at least on the musical front.
No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead. That’s the name of their new album. Most anyone familiar with the collective’s politics can surmise this number refers to the Palestinians killed during Israel’s assault on Gaza as of that day. We know that the number has increased since then, and that the range of Israeli guns and missiles has expanded into Lebanon. Most of the dead are civilians. Why bother trying to come up with some opaque title? The horror, banal as it is, supersedes literature.
This is one of the reasons that Godspeed’s music has so frequently managed to capture a moment’s structure of feeling. They acknowledge words’ failure, and pour the uncertainty into the swirling anarchy of their compositions. No Title succeeds as well as any of their previous efforts, which is to say brilliantly.
It takes a while for this recognizable chaos to show up on No Title. It’s disorienting. So is the long time it takes for the music to build up to its catharsis. I dare say the melancholy of this album is far more pronounced. The music isn’t any more sparse, but it often feels that way. There’s less that begs for familiarity.
Which isn’t to say the album is missing a throughline. There is one, but rather than bringing us back, it takes us further and further out, refusing to bring us home. This is music that deliberately leaves us stranded someplace strange and unforgiving. “Raindrops Cast In Lead,” “Broken Spires at Dead Kapital,” “Grey Rubble — Green Shoots.” These are the kinds of places No Title is dropping us.
There’s something else going on here, though. The reverb, the warbling and over-fuzzed guitars, the pounding drums, the strings moving between sweetness and aggression; these are, again, all still there and – again! – recognizably Godspeed’s. And there is plenty of doom still present on No Title, probably no more so than in the stumbling-yet-hypnotic thumps of “Pale Spectator Takes Photographs.” But elsewhere, these are brought together in a mode that is far more deliberate, more patient, perhaps even gentler? It’s chilling, but somehow comforting. Through most of their catalog, their compositions have occupied the epistemological gap as a kind of warning. Uncaring imperial hubris, an unraveling climate, state violence, collapsing worlds beyond any kind of pleacable grief. All of these are prelude to something far worse, or at least worse incarnations. This time around, there’s a sense the worst is already here.
No Title isn’t a warning. It’s a witness. We are already living in the wreckage, facing its weird aftermath, asking if something can be built. Maybe it can. That would account for some of the moments here that sound almost like hope or elation. Like the final track reminds us, with its swirling, long-delayed catharsis: “Grey Rubble – Green Shoots.” If it feels indescribable, then that’s probably the point.
Header image is from the album’s artwork.