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You Doo Right
From the Heights of Our Pastureland
Mothland - 2024
Michael Panontin
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The similarities between You Doo Right and their fellow Montreal post-rockers Godspeed You! Black Emperor are almost too obvious to ignore.
For one thing, You Doo Right - unlike the sprawling GY!BE, just a trio of guitarist/singer/synth player Justin Cober along with bassist Charles Masson and drummer John Talbot - occupy much the same sonic space as their musical forebears. Which is to say, plenty of sweeping sheets of sound, crushing guitar chords and deft sonic improvisations.
From the Heights of Our Pastureland, the group's third full-length, paints a canvas as desolate and unforgiving as, say, GY!BE's Yanqui U.X.O.. Hardly a surprise given the Israeli/Palestinian political backdrop framing both of those records. "We're all witnessing a genocide in Palestine in real time," Talbot told Still Listening magazine. "I don't think it's weird that this record feels a little bleak and the themes of sadness or hopelessness find themselves across the record."
But whereas GY!BE often cloak their anger in subtlety - those rueful strings always seem to me a sort of post-modern threnody - YDR get straight to the point, bludgeoning the listener almost from the start. 'Eager Glacier', the record's first official video, is textbook space rock, with pounding drums anchoring soaring, exhilarating guitars that, after a brief interlude at the five-minute mark, explode in a fiery - and surprisingly cathartic - rage. Equally impressive is the more rhythmic 'Spirit's Heavy, But Not Overthrown', which sits atop a military drumbeat before giving way to a proper motorik rhythm and guitar chords so bone-throttling they could conceivably loosen your molars.
Awesome stuff.
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