Expanding ever-larger and ever-further away from their roots in Godspeed You Black Emperor, SMZ sounds more like a bunch of classically-trained, crusty pirate punks on 13 Blues than they ever have before. That description may not be exactly what the Montreal collective has been aiming for, but there it is anyway. With “1,000,000 Died to Make This Sound,” the tone of 13 Blues is set: nearly four minutes of gently insistent vocals and sparse instrumentation gives way to an explosion of soaring crescendos built upon crashing percussion and an army of stringed instruments plucking, picking and clawing for dear life. That powertrain of dynamics doesn’t loose its grip; neither for the rest of the cut’s 15-minute duration, nor for the remainder of the album. By the time the crew is plaintively crying “I just want some action” on the second song (the 16-minute title track), the listener has experienced at least a half-dozen changes in tone, ranging from apocalyptic to meditative. All four of the tracks on 13 Blues were worked out in concert over the past two years of touring, and the effect is a more visceral sort of attack. This is what SMZ is best at, and by weaving first-person lyrical stances into their bombastic structures, they manage to be far more emotionally resonant than their more overwhelming compatriots in GSYBE.
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