With no ‘End’ in sight after 25 years, Explosions in the Sky make a statement at The Wiltern as one of post-rock’s most essential acts

By Josh Herwitt //

Explosions in the Sky with Kraus //
The Wiltern – Los Angeles
January 25th, 2024 //

It wasn’t until more than a decade after their inception when I first took notice of Explosions in the Sky.

I had somehow missed the boat on “Friday Night Lights” when the film came out while I was in college — despite my daily consumption of sports media and eventually finding a pathway into the industry — and again when it debuted as a TV series in the fall of 2006 shortly after receiving my diploma.

But with streaming services like Spotify fairly new to the marketplace at that time, it was one of your classic, word-of-mouth situations several years later from a former roommate who introduced me to Explosions’ music. Remember when we used to do that before we all succumbed to algorithms?

It should go without saying that the Texas outfit was a fitting choice for the soundtrack to a project about high school football in the Lone Star State. Explosions’ emotive and all-instrumental compositions have always felt right in a cinematic setting, and in that regard it’s not entirely surprising they have worked on four other soundtracks subsequently, with their latest arriving in 2021 for a documentary that premiered on PBS about a place they were all familiar with as native Texans: Big Bend National Park.

By that point, five-plus years had already passed since the release of 2016’s The Wilderness and there was no telling when we might hear new music from Chris Hrasky (drums), Michael James (guitar, bass, keyboards), Munaf Rayani (guitar, keyboards, percussion), Mark Smith (guitar) and the group’s newest member Jay Demko (bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion).

But any uncertainty surrounding the future of Explosions wasn’t completely cleared up last April when they announced their first North American tour in four years. Labeling the 16-date stretch of shows as “The End Tour” instead had fans quickly wondering if it would be their last time onstage together, and there’s no doubt that would have been a big loss to the post-rock community. Because in a relatively small scene led by international acts such as Sigur Rós (Iceland), Mogwai (Scotland) and Godspeed You! Black Emperor (Canada), having Explosions alive and well to lead the charge stateside remains crucial to the genre’s longevity here and around the world.

So when Explosions revealed a few months later that the name of their eighth studio LP would be End, whatever speculation that happened to still be floating around was finally dispelled. The press release accompanying the announcement, after all, explained that the seven-track effort was a concept album with a starting point of “an ending — death, or the end of a friendship or relationship.” And though the message is somber, it’s actually somewhat of a return to form sonically after seeing them incorporate more ambient sounds and electronics on The Wilderness. It didn’t garner the same amount of praise from the music media as the aforementioned, but End does represent another chapter in the quintet’s ever-growing catalog, with lead single “Ten Billion People” setting the tone at the outset and “Moving On” earning a spot as one of our favorite songs from 2023 (see our picks here).

The new material had unquestionably drew us back in after their longest gap between releases, and our excitement only grew at the end of last year upon learning that Explosions had extended “The End Tour” into early 2024 by unveiling another set of 16 shows — ultimately offering several more opportunities to catch them live.

There aren’t many, if any, post-rock bands in the U.S. that have carved out a stronger and more loyal following than Explosions with as much commercial success. Booking six shows in California for the continued stretch of “The End Tour” certainly indicated that as they took the stage at The Wiltern last Thursday to mark the second of two gigs in LA before stops in Ventura, San Diego, Anaheim and San Francisco, and as we came to discover, so did the setlist with a number of changes being made after Wednesday’s performance inside the historic Art Deco theater.

On this night, a third of the songs came from 2003’s seminal The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place with “First Breath After Coma” and “The Only Moment We Were Alone” bookending another epic journey of “cathartic mini-symphonies” filled with peaks and valleys over the course of 80 minutes. Nevertheless, what started 25 years ago as Breaker Morant and eventually morphed into Explosions in the Sky has stood the test of time as one of post-rock’s most essential acts. Fortunately for us, there appears to be no end — or should we write End? — in sight anytime soon. Let’s just hope things stay that way for a while longer.

EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY

Setlist:
First Breath After Coma
Ten Billion People
The Birth and Death of the Day
All Mountains
Magic Hours
Greet Death
Your Hand in Mine
The Fight
The Only Moment We Were Alone