itsnotyouitsme
New Amsterdam
2011-09-27
Composed by a violinist and a guitarist, “Everybody’s Pain is Magnificent is inhabited by sweeps and groans and billows and feathery-explosive falls. The 88-minute, two-disc, near-wordless sound-scape sounds human, fibrous, organic, as if it’s being sung by strangely-voiced and longing monsters. Maybe monsters who’ve been listening to Sigur Rós, since a rare passage of singing in “always look up (always look up)” sent my mind flying off to the ah-ah-ah of Jónsi Birgisson. Even the non-human sounds have the texture of voices in the way a violin does, that catching grunt of bow on string, two abrasive surfaces working against one another in a physical way, in a space whose reality you believe you can detect. Postrock, personated.