The new Godspeed You! Black Emperor album is not about Palestine, in the sense that for the band, nothing can be about Palestine. There is nothing to talk about. The evidence overwhelmingly points to a genocide, and that’s supported by UN findings on the matter. So, what can we do? What can we say? Every sympathetic person already knows about it, and the people on the other side won’t let themselves be convinced it’s happening. What good is awareness when people shut their ears? Posed with all these questions, the band decided to make the album about something specific: hope.
For decades now, the post-rock legends have embodied the spirit of the genre, helping to define what it truly means. There is rock, yes, but there is also what’s after it, before it, and everything in between. The band would create a powerful riff to symbolize a storm and then hit us with the calm texture of the rain and the subsequent static. Like a true post-rock classic, GY!BE’s new album aims to sonically capture what surrounds the ongoing conflict in Palestine, but in a way that feels respectful towards the people involved.
It’s not about musically recreating the atrocities at hand, rather, it’s about showing how the people there grieve, mourn, and admirably persevere towards a better future despite it all. Case in point, the second song on the album, “BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD”, where a melody is set up in the beginning, appears to fade away halfway through the song and triumphantly returns by the end. As the title effectively describes, in spite of the atrocities, there is something that endures in Palestine, something young and fragile, but with the potential to eventually overcome its obstacles. That something —an identity, an idea— has, continues, and will survive for as long as there are people standing with it.
In addition to this, the album also isn’t shy about bringing attention to the situation or denouncing those who choose to ignore the atrocities being committed. The official title of the album is “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” which immediately brings into focus the situation in Gaza, and makes you wonder where the numbers stand today. Besides this, the song “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD” features a poem written and recorded by Michele Fiedler-Fuentes, in which she talks about women and children who were murdered before they got to experience the beauty of sunrise. In other words, a better world was taken away from them, a world that was just within reach, and that is a tragedy everyone should know about.
Regarding its technical aspects, there is plenty worth praising the album for, like the production or the mastering, but relevant to the subject at hand is the structure. The album begins by bringing us into the situation, then driving us through the people living it and the way they react to what’s happening to them. Then, as the city appears to be completely dead, a pale spectator takes a photo and what remains, what we see, is grey rubble. But, among that rubble, there are some green shoots. There is still hope for Palestine, something can grow, but we must nurture it before it’s too late.
The message is clear then: Palestine will persevere, but it needs our help. As for what we can do, on a collective scale, we must champion policies that support Palestine and reject all of those that benefit the perpetrators of the genocide; on an individual scale, continue talking about the situation and not let the atrocities be forgotten.
At the moment of writing this article, there are 43,992 dead.
