After a three-hour nap in preparation for the show, I found myself in the Salt Shed press pit. At 10 p.m. on a Monday night, it was pushing my bedtime, but this was not necessarily a show for young people. My dream-like state was accentuated by waves of instrumental rock reverberating off the stage. Explosions in the Sky (EITS) opened with “Catastrophe and the Cure,” a piece with a joyful keyboard melody, a steady drum beat, and rapid guitar picks that gave it a fuzzy underlying sound. EITS, which is more than 20 years old, comprises Mark Smith, Chris Hrasky, Michael James, and Munaf Rayani.
Drifting toward the middle of the pit, I passed an amplifier that made the bass rattle my teeth and buzz through my chest. With their instruments acting as extensions of themselves, the band seemed to enter their music. Without vocals to ground the music and pull a listener back to reality, it was easy to get lost in the sound. As the show progressed, band members seamlessly switched instruments, and while Rayani was the only musician to directly address the crowd, it was impossible to call anyone the lead.
The group moved into “Loved Ones,” a hit from their 2023 album End, which (along with the current “End Tour”) has sparked questions about the stability of the band’s future. “Loved Ones” began with individual resonant keyboard notes and built into a hopeful and heartbreaking piece that expressed love triumphing. Smith and Rayani increased the energy as they added in on the guitar; the band began to bob together with the rhythm. Based on the way the music and performance moved them, not just individually but also as a unit, I personally don’t see them breaking up any time soon.
With the first heavy riff of “The Birth and Death of the Day,” I filed out of the pit with the other photographers, three songs but already 20-something minutes into the set. I wormed my way through the crowd, surrounded by a loosely packed sea of flannel shirts and flat brim caps. The song built into a high-pitched static, before dropping in intensity with the resumption of the upbeat keys. The piece ebbed and flowed with the shifts between crashing drums and joyful keyboard notes. Each shift was both slightly jarring and perfectly executed, reflecting, in an abstract way, the contradictions and similarities between birth and death. Throughout the show, it was difficult to determine when one song had ended and the next began, and the ceaseless waves of sound evoked emotions which enhanced the feeling of disconnectedness from reality.
The band performed “It’s Never Going to Stop,” with its staccato raindrop sound followed by “With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept,” with its melancholy notes. The slow, resonant start to “Your Hand in Mine,” my personal favorite EITS track, signaled that the show was moving towards a close. The piece began with layers of complementary uplifting keyboard and guitar melody, then shifted in energy as the steady drums added in. The drums alternately dropped away and returned as the melody evolved, becoming increasingly complex and hopeful. As “Your Hand in Mine” faded, the band returned to a creepy minor key with “The Fight” before ending on another high note with “The Only Moment We Were Alone.”
The name Explosions in the Sky may lead one to imagine an intense group, but the artists are remarkably controlled and subtle with their sound. The fluidity of their performance, the obvious mastery of their instruments, the lack of lyrics, and their general chemistry on stage allowed the crowd to enter into the music, experiencing it with body and soul.
