Explo­sions in the Sky is an instru­men­tal post-rock quar­tet from Texas. Their char­ac­ter­is­tic for­mula of a chim­ing gui­tar power trio on top of pul­sat­ing drums is a bit more palat­able than their extremely loud, men­ac­ing Scot­tish peers Mog­wai (read The Dork Report review of their April show in New York). Per­son­ally, I hear a kind of homo­gene­ity to much of Explo­sions’ music that I don’t hear in other post-rock out­fits like Mog­wai, Sigur Rós, and Tortoise.

Explo­sions in the Sky

To over­sim­plify their his­tory, the band is pri­mar­ily known for two fac­toids. In an unfor­tu­nate coin­ci­dence, their album Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live For­ever, released a few days before 9/11, fea­tured a cover illus­tra­tion of a plane and a cap­tion read­ing “This plane will crash tomor­row.” Long before I actu­ally heard any of their music, I do recall this story help­ing to feed the 24-hour-a-day broad­cast news hys­te­ria that fol­lowed. Bet­ter bol­ster­ing their repute, they com­posed the pop­u­lar score to Peter Berg’s 2004 film Fri­day Night Lights, and they’ve attracted a sig­nif­i­cant fan base — sell­ing out out­door Cen­tral Park Rum­sey Play­field even in the rain.

The band’s des­ig­nated spokesman Munaf Rayani began the show by announc­ing it was their 10-year anniver­sary as a band. They played for about an hour and half with­out inter­rup­tion, blend­ing songs together into a con­tin­u­ous flow. From where I stood, the appre­cia­tive audi­ence rec­og­nized and cheered many tunes. But Rayani apol­o­gized at the end of the show for things hav­ing “going off the rails,” and they walked off with­out an encore despite there still being some time before the Cen­tral Park cur­few. For all I know, that may be their cus­tom, but it was really sur­pris­ing, and audi­bly dis­ap­pointed every­one around me. Awkward.

Offi­cial band site: www.explosionsinthesky.com

Buy the lat­est Explo­sions in the Sky album All of a Sud­den I Miss Every­one from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.