After years of avoiding saying anything to anyone as part of media-shy Montreal-based warehouse-dwelling doom-laden orchestral post-rock mystic-niks, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, on the second album of his side project, A Silver Mt. Zion, Efrim Menuck finally had something to say. And this was it: "Sisters and brothers, we have surely lost our way." Dang.
But that wasn't just it. There was more words of sage-like wisdom from our reclusive friend as he informed us that "There is beauty in this land, but I don't often see it. There's beauty in this land, but I don't often feel it" Yet before we resign to all hope being lost Efrim's plaintive squwark assures us "We will find our way", and we wipe our brow and give a collective sigh of relief.
There's a school of thought that suggests the music of A Silver Mt. Zion has suffered badly from Efrim's decision to add vocals, and at this point in the song that belief is carrying some serious weight.
But then he hits us. Right between the eyes, with the most brilliantly blunt and antagonistic statement: "Musicians are cowards!" Musicians are cowards? It's wide-eye'd and jaw-droppingly good. Yet there's no time to wallow in the jealousy of wishing you'd thought of it first, as the song continues: "Let's argue in the kitchen for hours and hours. Tomorrow is a travesty, tomorrow should be ours", and as violins swell triumphantly Efrim reiterates on repeat "Musicians are cowards! Musicians are cowards!..." each exclamation mark more emphatic than the next and the whole thing is so absolutely glorious and beautiful and fills you with such anarchist verve that you just want to go out join a protest march or punch a cop or sit in a hip café on the corner of St-Laurent and St-Viateur and act all mysterious.
Just when you think Efrim has become immersed in his pursuit against cowardly musicians and has forgotten the little people, he brings us back under the warmth of his counter-cultural wing by declaring "The soldiers with their specialists and the pigs with their guns cannot stop the lost ones and the desperate ones and the driven ones." And as the song winds down to just some plucked violins and reverb-laden guitar he urges us "Come on friends, to the barricades again" and one wouldn't dare not follow.
The Triumph Of Our Tired Eyes - A Silver Mt. Zion
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