God Is An Astronaut

The Glen Of the Downs boys (an Irish rural village) return to the capital blessed by another sold-out show, actually fairly predictable given what happened during the tour for their last studio album "Age Of The Fith Sun", now dating back to 2010. Post-rock is still clearly going strong. God Is An Astronaut's brand of post-rock, though, is a far cry from dilatations and introspection, largely free of minimalism and electronic experimentation: shedding the ambient layering that nonetheless wraps around large sections of their studio tracks, on stage God Is An Astronaut set the powder alight, flooding their audience with an avalanche of grandiloquent sound and revealing another, more vivid dimension of their music.

The arrival of new keyboardist Jamie Dean allows the Kinsella brothers' band (Niels on bass, Torsten on guitar, and trusty Lloyd Hanney on drums) to free themselves from pre-recorded backing tracks and double duties on-stage, and to focus entirely on their own roles, gaining even more in dynamics and collective power. A more generous dose of virtuosity dresses up the songs chosen for the setlist, put together specifically to celebrate the band's tenth anniversary: in the best of their Roman shows, the Irish outfit came close to moments in which the measured energy of their studio albums turned into an apotheosis not without drifts toward progressive and, at times, even prog-metal.

To be fair, God Is An Astronaut always stay well on the right side of good taste, avoiding sterile virtuosity and baroque architectures: still, Torsten Kinsella is a true firebrand on stage, and with his effects-laden guitar he manages to radiate a sense of vigorous authority. The same goes for the rhythm section: Hanney lets loose without restraint, while Niels Kinsella dishes out his dizzying bass runs. As bold as it may sound, it opens up a spectrum of associations ranging from Mogwai all the way to Rush...

The setlist features almost all the tracks from "All Is Violent, All Is Bright" (2005), a few necessary pulls from their 2002 debut "The End Of The Beginning" ("From Dust To Beyond", "Route 666"), and the best picks from their last two records ("Shadows", "Echoes", "Zodiac", "Snowfall" from the self-titled 2008 album, "Worlds In Collision" and the title track from 2010's "Age Of The Fifth Sun"); rather unjustifiably, though, the tracks from the excellent "Far From Refuge" (2007) are left out of the performance entirely.

Over nearly an hour and a half of the show, the quartet never faltered emotionally or instrumentally, and the versions offered of "Suicide By Star", "Echoes", "Shadows", "Forever Lost" and "Fireflies And Empty Skies" (fittingly placed at the close) were memorable. In the background, the projections evocatively reinforced the environmental and cosmic imagery that God Is An Astronaut love to draw on: from green Ireland to the stars. The lightshow was equally faithful to a metaphorical idea of psychedelia, fully in keeping with the notion that light and music must merge to create a synaesthetic effect.

A near-obsessive pursuit of sonic clarity kept the band's many layers from collapsing into a thunderous, indistinct blur. God Is An Astronaut aren't chasing an ideal of experimentation, but their passionate worldview is good for the senses, besieged as they are by instrumental vehemence, even if it's conveyed through melodies that are not complex, but certainly well-crafted. More than once, the feeling arises that some of their songs could easily have been enriched by vocals: let's hope this possibility isn't ruled out entirely in the future. Let's also hope that, at the end of a year of celebrations, an official document arrives on CD (and why not, on DVD too) of what God Is An Astronaut are like live: an experience not to be passed up lightly.

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