Packaging Notes
LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight jacket with black poly-lined audiophile dust sleeve, credit insert, pull-out art poster and download code for 320 kbps MP3 copy of the album.
CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on thick 24pt. paperboard with a printed CD dust sleeve.
Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra
Release date: 21 January 2014
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Tracklist
1. FUCK OFF GET FREE (FOR THE ISLAND OF MONTRÉAL)
2. AUSTERITY BLUES
3. TAKE AWAY THESE EARLY GRAVE BLUES
4. LITTLE ONES RUN
5. WHAT WE LOVED WAS NOT ENOUGH
6. RAINS THRU THE ROOF AT THEE GRANDE BALLROOM (FOR CAPITAL STEEZ)
Running time: 00:49:17
Packaging Notes
LP is pressed on 180 gram virgin vinyl at Optimal (Germany) and comes in a heavyweight jacket with black poly-lined audiophile dust sleeve, credit insert, pull-out art poster and download code for 320 kbps MP3 copy of the album.
CD comes in a custom gatefold jacket printed on thick 24pt. paperboard with a printed CD dust sleeve.
Description
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (SMZ) has traced a barbed-wire arc of genre-defying protest music since its inception in 1999. Formed by Efrim Menuck, with Thierry Amar and Sophie Trudeau, the initial iteration of the band was a predominantly instrumental trio that forged a more intimate and ragged chamber-punk than Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the other group in which all three founding SMZ members also played (and continue to play). Through seven albums from 2000-2010, SMZ expanded its line-up and shifted towards an increasing use of lead and group vocals, with Menuck penning politically-charged lyrics to anchor long-form multi-movement compositions that juxtaposed electrified guitars against a 4-piece string section of violins, cello and contrabass.
Most recently, SMZ has pared back to five players, with Menuck's massive spectrum-spanning electric guitar sound emerging as the spine around which two violins, bass (now more often electric than acoustic) and drums are deployed. SMZ have managed a handful of short tours in the past couple of years (in the gaps between GYBE commitments) and as anyone who has seen the band in its recent incarnation can attest, their current sound is more honed, laser-guided and bone-rattling than ever, melding hardcore, blues, garage and dark metal influences that have nothing to do with anything so quaint as “post-rock” (a tag the group has always and rightly rejected).
Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light On Everything is the first definitive document of the band's newfound sound and style as a quintet. It’s also their first single LP-length work since the band’s debut record as a trio almost 15 years ago, and features road-tested pummelling rock-outs “Fuck Off Get Free (For The Island Of Montréal)”, “Take Away These Early Grave Blues” and “What We Loved Was Not Enough” alongside the previously unheard lullabyes/minuets “Little Ones Run” and “Rains Thru The Roof At Thee Grande Ballroom (For Capital Steez)” and the album centrepiece “Austerity Blues” with its closing lyric “Lord let my son live long enough to see that mountain torn down” sung in varying incarnations throughout the second half of this 14-minute epic.
This lyric in many ways encapsulates Menuck's unflinching take on a world replete with shabbiness, greed and injustice, seen through the lens of parenthood, mortality, endurance and defiance. There are few other musicians who deliver social critique with the courage and honesty of lines like “All our cities gonna burn / All our bridges gonna snap / All our pennies gonna rot / Lightning roll across our tracks / All our children gonna die”. Feel-good music this is not; but neither can it reductively be tagged apocalyptic or world-weary. Fuck Off Get Free rages with scorn and with hope, utterly passionate but pointedly unromantic. Thee Silver Mt. Zion once again demonstrates, like few other bands working today, that there is much to fight for and against, and plenty more fight songs to sing.
Thanks for listening.
Credits
Thierry Amar – Contrebasse, Electric Bass, Plucked Piano, VocalsEfrim Manuel Menuck – Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Mellotron, Vocals
Jessica Moss – Volin, Plucked Piano, Vocals
Sophie Trudeau – Violin, Plucked Piano, Vocals
David Payant – Drums, Organ, Vocals
Recorded by Greg Norman at Mansion Vibes in Studio B12, Valcourt, Quebec.
Mixed by Greg Norman and SMZ at Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango, Montreal, Quebec.
Mastered by Harris Newman at Greymarket, Montreal, Quebec.
Reviews
"[SMZ] sound more vital and musical than ever. Only shared feelings of helplessness and powerlessness fueled by equal measures of desperation and hope could summon an anger focused enough to create art such as this. In this band's collective heart, rock & roll is still a force reckoned with personally and politically." – All Music Guide
"A fierce burst of intricacy, passion and punk urgency." – Rock-A-Rolla (cover feature)
"Over a swelling symphony of guitars marked by spastic, lingering riffs, [on "'Take Away These Early Grave Blues'] frontman Efrim Menuck eerily wails to 'let them sing on', a line that plays out as both an anthemic call to action and an absolute condemnation over the sea of blitzing dissonance. While the band’s fury seems as if it could build and build into eternity, it eventually breaks down into a cascade of atmospheric feedback, which only makes its short and violent lifespan burn that much brighter." – Consequence of Sound
"Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra is a very different beast than the Polaris-winning band from which they spun off, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. In fact, through the heaviness and mantra-like shouts, this latest song 'Take Away These Early Grave Blues' sounds more like Swans’ The Seer than Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!. It’s an immediate and propulsive piece of music where the word 'post rock' never crosses your mind once — this is punk as all hell." – Stereogum
"Age and time haven’t withered the power of Thee Silver Mt. Zion; if anything, this five-piece incarnation of the band has distilled all that free-jazz/post-rock/orchestral/folk/punk/metal influence into a record that’s the best work the Canadians have produced to date. In a world where little seems to change for the better, Menuck’s anger is more vital and relevant than ever." – The Line Of Best Fit
"Harnessing the relentless roar of an underdog army. While often similarly majestic [to GY!BE] SMZ adopt a more vocal form of protest as they channel punk, rock and folk forms into epic petrol bomb songs, wall-of-sound clamour and tear-stained revolutionary ballads. Whether blasting barricades with tumultuous waves of drums, sawn strings and guitars or stumbling softly through the morning after ashes, this is a powerful collection of contemporary battle hymns that rings out like a well-needed musical call to arms for the 99 per cent." – MOJO
"The current lineup... gives the band's delivery more focus and allows it to move with greater stealth and mobility. Throughout the fifty-minute album, the band works up a glorious noise, with all five members contributing vocals, sometimes in the form of a collective chant, to the six songs... Theirs is not a music dragged down by defeat and surrender but one empowered by clear-headed hope and determination. As the group sings in the album's opening song, 'But there's fire in our dreams,' and we hope that said fire will long continue to burn." – Textura
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