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All forms of protest and their respective levels of efficacy are debatable, but it's especially puzzling to wonder if a scrubby group of Canadians making harrowing, entirely instrumental rock music can advocate for social change. In the decade since I last saw the band live, Godspeed You! Black Emperor has certainly lightened up, and I mean that almost literally. Its 2002 live show was an epic but mysterious affair where the musicians were rendered as shadowy figures on a stage illuminated only partially by the anti-war film projections behind them. When it was all over, you wouldn't be able to pick out a single member from a police line-up. Now, half the band walks out onto the lit stage to fiddle with pedalboards and check their instrument cables before the lights are dimmed and the show even starts. I could now draw de facto leader Efrim Menuck from memory, and he'd be wearing a long waistcoat with a cocktail in hand. What the hell? Has revolution gone soft?
Once GY!BE officially started its sold-out Wonder Ballroom show on Jan. 31, though, shit got dramatic very quickly. A drone set the mood as band members crept onto the stage one by one and assist the sound of one bass-heavy note on a loop, building into the absolutely staggering wall of symphonic noise on "Hope Drone." When it finally reached its crescendo, the crowd was elated to hear the familiar notes of "Storm" that opens breakthrough album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. By the time the band got through Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress—played almost in its entirety—it began to feel like coming down from an especially intense trip. Then we got "Moya," one of the band's darkest, most gratifying numbers, which was even featured in a post-apocalyptic zombie film that parodied how senselessly angry we all our.
It's daunting to try and pass off the old "you had to be there" adage to explain the experience, but it is fitting. With so many other bands now employing what's essentially the same formula and exploiting it to various levels of success, GY!BE are still very much committed to their idealistic principles. One wonders, again, how an instrumental rock band might hope to change anything. There's no overt message in their show. There's beauty, drama and potentially lasting damage to hearing, but aside from projected images of police lights or protestors being herded and dispersed, anyone not already familiar with the band's politics would be confused. Because the music is so unbelievably moving it is nearly impossible not to search for the inherent conflict or message, but some of us need it spelled out. Another Canadian band, Propagandhi, use Chomsky sound bites on their records and comically manipulated public service announcements from Shell petroleum to at least hint as to where to learn more about the evils of multinational corporations. GY!BE aren't so obvious. They just come out and make something intensely pleasurable and temporary, and hope we all take the lead from there.
Willamette Week