Boom and gloom

>> Explosions in the Sky shed some light on instrumental rock

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

“We grew up listening to bad metal and then punk and Nirvana and indie rock, the typical pattern,” says drummer Chris Hrasky. “But when we first formed, the idea of being an instrumental band was strange to us, but it just somehow made sense.”

Following the example of Mogwai and the Dirty Three, Austin’s Explosions in the Sky went without a singer, and four albums later, they’re packing shows all over North America, the U.K., Europe and beyond. The ebbing and gushing waves of sound created by Hrasky and his bandmates—guitarists Mark T. Smith and Munaf Rayani and bassist Michael James—can currently be heard on Friday Night Lights, the TV adaptation of the 2004 football movie of the same name, for which Explosions in the Sky wrote an original score. The TV show is using songs from the band’s previous albums (their latest is All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone), further bolstering the band’s profile, at least in the U.S. But despite Explosions in the Sky’s crossover success as an instrumental band (their bio boasts that they attract fans of Sigur Ros, Sufjan Stevens and My Chemical Romance simultaneously), not having a frontman, a band leader, is as much a curse as a blessing.

“It’s nice because it’s so much more collaborative,” says Hrasky, “but it’s also frustrating because it takes a long time to come up with something that we all love, and unless we all love it, it doesn’t make the cut.”

In the two years it took to complete the latest record, plenty of material was scrapped, months worth of song parts rejected because they weren’t exciting or fresh enough.

“That always seems to happen,” Hrasky admits. “I guess it’s our process—working on a record, not liking anything we come up with and having to get depressed and start over again.”

Like many bands of their ilk, Explosions in the Sky have as much potential to produce light as they do darkness, celebratory fireworks or deadly bombs. The drama they pack into some tracks is so strong it’s almost narrative, allowing for a real range of emotion, but people tend to pick up on their depressive qualities more than the uplifting ones. Hrasky notes that All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone is predominantly dark, in contrast to its relatively “hopeful” and “bright” predecessor, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place, but they’ve never wanted to convey “an overwhelming sense of despair.”

“We definitely don’t wanna make music that people just listen to and get depressed by,” he says, acknowledging that their lyric-less songs are entirely open to interpretation, even within the band. On this record, he hears themes of regret and isolation, feelings he’s dealt with in recent years, as band life and the passage of time have separated him from friends and family.

“There’s that realization, when you get a little bit older, that you’ve lost touch with people who used to be part of your everyday life. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last couple of years, but I think two of the guys [in the band] would connect more to the idea of [the record] being about loneliness and isolation, those being the two that don’t have wives or girlfriends.”

With the Paper Chase and Eluvium
at le National on Friday, March 23,
8:30 p.m., sold out