Mono & World's End Girlfriend - Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain (2005)

Welp, I think it's been long enough. Friday Night Lights wrapped up over two years ago, advertising agencies have ditched Mogwai soundalikes for Beach House soundalikes, and here in sunny Portland, OR, the crust punks have abandoned their wannabe Godspeed projects to start wannabe Joy Division projects. Finally, I can listen to tearjerking post-rock without barfing.

To celebrate, here's one of my favorite post-rock albums. It's a collaboration between Mono, Japan's foremost purveyors of heartbreaking, eardrum-shattering instrumental post-rock, and World's End Girlfriend, a Japanese musical project with which I am, aside from this album, completely unfamiliar. Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain is a single, patient, transcendent, deeply sorrowful piece of music. Across five tracks and an hour and fourteen minutes, layered cellos, wordless female vocals, piano, chiming guitars, and cymbal washes build and recede, at times coalescing into huge, distortion-filled payoffs. So, a lot like Mono, but with an overall darker, more neoclassical vibe.

Track listing:
1. Trailer 1
2. Trailer 2
3. Trailer 3
4. Trailer 4
5. Trailer 5

Yearning