Montreal’s Constellation record label deserves to be spoken of with the reverence given to the most significant indie labels of the past few decades. Their initial run in the late 1990s introduced the world to such unique entities as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Fly Pan Am, Do Make Say Think, and a Silver Mt. Zion. But every label must endure a moment where the initial name-making bands and defining sounds move on or become predictable, where we learn if the label will survive in the long term and at what cost or compromise.
In the case of Constellation, they stuck to their guns, remaining a bastion of politically engaged, spiritually progressive, local cause-supporting creativity. They expanded their roster with unique voices rather than grabbing at established names or novelty collaborations to keep it afloat, never overloading the release schedule with excessive scale in the hope something might stick to the charts through sheer luck. Instead, in the 2020s, Constellation continue to release respectable endeavors from his elder stars, expansive new works from up-and-comers like Joni Void or Markus Floats, and gorgeous missives from Jessica Moss or Jerusalem in My Heart.
Based on the evidence of their first record together, one can hope that We Are Winter’s Blue and Radiant Children will be more than a one-off whimsical side-project. Featuring Mathieu Ball of multi-Polaris Music Prize nominated metal group Big Brave, Constellation-mainstay Efrim Manuel Menuck (Godspeed, Mt. Zion, along with Patch One (aka Peter Swegart) and Jonathan Downs — both of the long-defunct Ada — the group’s first album, No More Apocalypse Father, was recorded in just a few days between 21-24 August last year.
It’s worth noting upfront that the group have no designated drummer. Patch One handles ‘ghost drums’ at times, but otherwise, We Are Winter’s Blue and Radiant Children refuse to fall back on percussion’s effortless propulsion and structure. The music is all beautiful clouds, terrifying as the biblical description of angels as “entire bodies, including their backs, hands, and wings… full of eyes all around…” or “…his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches…”
The timing couldn’t be more perfect, emerging in the anniversary week of 9/11, that era-defining horror remembered here in the quotation of George W. Bush’s line, “They hate us for our freedom,” set amid the banal and the catastrophic: “… ‘they hate us for our freedom,’ said the last living boss to the manager of the manager on the 13th floor, perched at the lake of bones, just before the edge collapsed.” No More Apocalypse Father swoops between those perspectives, the global and that which lies beyond, as perceived from the disquieting reality of modern apartment life, the storage of humans in small boxes that have become both so much the center of our lives, as well as the place from which we see all too much of the world.
There are gentle repetitions throughout We Are Winter’s Blue and Radiant Children’s No More Apocalypse Father, whether that’s opening with what might be the churring of a bird at twilight or merely a flicker passing through the wires inside a synthesizer or the closing of the second track with what may be a caged menagerie or the song of free birds; the “helicopters northward”, mentioned in “Rats and Roses” but also in “Dangling Blanket From a Balcony (White Phosphorous)”; the throb of bass that opens several tracks, orbs of sound swelling and bursting to illuminate some grand vista — a crunchy impact at the start of the title track.
As with Godspeed and Mt. Zion, Menuck continues to conjure a world perched precariously between the scouring annihilation of climate change and the ever-rising authoritarianism directed not at the raging fires themselves but instead at tamping down the rising panic at home or at quashing the greatest mass movement of population ever unleashed. As he has said while discussing the themes of this record: “Seeing things from a distance and not being able to intervene… If you’re a feeling and thinking person, that’s just part of the human condition. We watch horror unfolding from afar, unable to do anything concrete to change it.”
Seventy percent of non-human species have been eliminated from the Earth’s surface since 1970. What does one say or do in response to such a reality? The diary entry of “Dangling Blanket From a Balcony” gives some sense of it with its diary entry encompassing Michael Jackson, guitar practice, the obsession with disciplining the human body (in this case, a failure to quit smoking): celebrity gossip, killing time with productivity, and dwelling on our imperfections… Menuck bleats like the lamb of god lamenting a world gifted to man’s care, now soured by our venal and petty urges.
That’s the warm opening to the explicit pairing that closes No More Apocalypse Father, “Dangling Blanket From a Balcony (White Phosphorus)” and “(Goodnight) White Phosphorus”, where everything unfolds against “downtown burning, white phosphorous between the river and the sky…” Menuck’s voice sometimes mimics the spindly letters written many feet tall across the sky as chemical fire descends from the Heavens to Earth. We Are Winter’s Blue and Radiant Children strike up into a vast clamor of feedback and cycling phrases, everything lost in the maelstrom as global climate tipping points explode over and over in a red-hot ball of horror, human-made change pushing the planet irretrievably into a volcanic place we cannot imagine until we topple into it.
Living life, finding moments of calm, while disasters too many to mention unfurl just beyond the window frame, at a little distance across town, or many miles out of sight but not out of mind, We Are Winter’s Blue and Radiant Children have conjured a haunting and concise impression of what so much of our anxious reality looks like now. We almost know too much, the entirety of a world’s awfulness poured out via a media, social media, and internet machine into a constant deluge that overwhelms the human mind. What’s most absorbing is that No More Apocalypse Father can tackle such weighty themes and still be a beautiful listen from start to finish. I’m unsure whether that leaves me hopeful or pleasantly distracted for one more precious moment.