For My Parents
Temporary Residence
2012
Rating: 7.5 shock troops out of 10
As with most instrumental post-rock bands of this nature, I'm kind of at a loss as to what to say about this new Mono record "For My Parents," especially to those already familiar with their work. When you play the sort of bombastic music these Japanese rockers have been churning out on multiple albums for the past decade or longer, it's kinda hard to differentiate from one set of the music to the next. It's all immaculately played, beautiful stuff. My heart will always rate the first record of theirs I listened to a lot - "One Step More and You Die" - as their finest work, but there is no reason someone couldn't feel the same way about this newest release. I would guess the only real difference is the orchestral strings backing most of the songs, and the level of quiet-loud-quiet bombast that was their early hallmark seems to have been taken down a notch. I think that means the music is prettier and less aggressive, or something along those lines. If Explosions in the Sky are the soundtrack to slow-motion Texas football, Mono feels like the score to a Kurosawa samurai picture (and if that seems racist, I mean it be more geography-ist).
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