Concert Review: Explosions in the Sky at Congress Theater 7/2/09

July 3, 3:31 PMChicago Music Scene ExaminerJeff Fuldauer

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Explosions in the Sky, with a reputation of putting on intense shows, seemed a bit out of place at the cavernous Congress Theater on Thursday night. The post-rock Texas troupe jammed on their hallmark tension and release tunes, but somehow didn’t quite connect with the audience in an often mellow, drifting set.

The quartet of Midland, Texas natives have enjoyed a huge surge in popularity stemming from their exposure on Friday Night Lights, composing the soundtrack for the 2004 feature film and NBC television series installments. Explosions in the Sky have methodically utilized their boob tube publicity to surpass their exclusively instrumental contemporaries in popularity.

Thus, the crowd that filled the balcony (but not the standing-only main floor section) was just what you’d expect from the target audience of FNL: trendy grade-schoolers stood sober next to the emo crowd downing cans of Modelo. And before performing to the fratty, all-ages crowd, guitarist Mark Smith explained that July 2 symbolized the collective’s tenth anniversary, subtly promoting the t-shirts and posters printed especially for this Congress Theater performance.

Unfortunately, the band’s poster (above) of the nearby Western Ave. train stop was the highlight of the show.

Although each song channels into different chord permutations, invariably the tunes transform back into the same inflexible template. With one track drifting seamlessly into the next, what comes together is a repetitious stretch of guitar power that meets intricate winsomeness. The peaceful components, driven by wobbly threads of lustrous guitar, build into perplexingly tense crescendos while the wailing guitar combinations somehow maintain a gentle quality. Inevitably, Explosions in the Sky have instances when a guitar bursts away from the others to drive home an unswerving version of the tune’s melody, but despite the changing tunes the four artists collide to end each piece with their signature climactic freak outs that cue the song's imminent demolition.

Essentially, Explosions in the Sky writes indie-rock choruses and expands them into prolonged instrumentals, wheeling around an effortless yet obfuscated melodic tune until they gradually nail it down, terminating on a predictable impact. But for some reason, what works so well in a studio production didn’t quite translate into a stunning live performance – partly due to mismatching the band with a venue that plays more to hard rock shows than droning instrumentals.

Your Chicago Music Scene Examiner would guess that Explosions in the Sky would thrive at an outdoor amphitheater setting instead of a capacious, gritty 1920s movie house. Please don’t read this review and stay away from future Explosions in the Sky shows, because they obviously have a catalog of incredibly acute, overpowering material. However, it requires the perfect setting to achieve thier desired impact on an audience. It’s interesting to note how the wrong venue can break the ambience of this unique band. Hopefully they return to Chicago soon for a return trip to Lollapalooza, a much more suitable setting for a truly distinctive crew.