Do Come Hear Cheer

Toronto Post-Rock Act Do Make Say Think Brings The Volume

originally published September 19, 2007

The age of post-rock, that epic swirl of guitars and noise, in some ways has passed into the annals of history. But still it soldiers on. Though no longer the darling of the music media, it still pops the mainstream bubble from time to time, and its veterans continue to draw large numbers of faithful fans. Explosions in the Sky scores a weekly prime-time TV show. Mogwai is churning out soundtracks to fairly large-scale films. Godspeed You! Black Emperor is still on hiatus, and collaborating with Vic Chesnutt.

A genre that took the tried-and-true mechanisms of indie rock and molded them into big graceful slabs of cinematic drama, post-rock exploded into the public consciousness in the late '90s. Do Make Say Think was there in the salad days and continues to gradually hone its sound into tighter and sharper pieces of widescreen shrapnel, condensing the genre's tendency to sprawl a single track across an entire LP side without losing an ounce of emotional heft. The band has always strayed to the rockier side of the hyphen, with loose jazz underpinnings, but it's been the balance between the rock and the post that's most consistently impressive. The album Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn was the culmination of everything mesmerizing about the sound, and when it dropped in 2003, the genre was just beginning to need a boost. Sort of a meeting of Tortoise's TNT and Mogwai's Young Team - except better than both - the record firmly squeezed in beside Godspeed's second album in the hearts of fans.

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In February of this year, You, You're a History in Rust practically tiptoed into record stores. Perhaps this was simply due to the nearly four years since Winter Hymn; or maybe it's that Canadian post-rock just doesn't sell magazines anymore. Aren't you a little sick of our northern neighbors trumping us? But the album is brilliant all the same, sounding a bit like a compendium of DMST's discography while subtly paring down the grandeur - and not so subtly featuring guest vocalists. It was inevitable, what with several members moonlighting in Broken Social Scene.

It's a fairly common assessment that Winter Hymn was the album that saw the potential of a truly great band reach fruition, and it's always interesting to hear the following release. The judgment is thus unfair much of the time, and the band's multi-instrumentalist Ohad Benchetrit agrees.

"I really do feel that Winter Hymn was the point where we fully realized our sound," says Benchetrit, "and then after that we said, 'Well, what do we do now?' We made an effort with this album to do what we love but to explore things we've done in projects outside of the band. An effort not to repeat ourselves, but we are what we are. Some things were easy, others not so much. We'd never experimented with vocals before, and we enjoyed that immensely. We just wanted History in Rust to be a continuation of our sound without sacrificing what we want to do and without making the same record again."

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Of the Canadian sensations that stormed our nation a few years back, Broken Social Scene, Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade are three huge examples of fresh young bands that sprang fully formed from the loins of what seemed, in a Yankee's eyes, a secret scene. Being Canadian, Do Make Say Think has been in a somewhat unique position of being doubly "trendy." Now that both the Canadian and post-rock surges of newsworthy global awareness have tapered off, Benchetrit says the quieter life is no problem.

"I think the same thing I've always thought about that," he says. "Music comes from everywhere; it's so rare that anyone anywhere does anything truly unique. We went through this twice, with the rise and fall of post-rock, the influence of Constellation [Records, in Montreal], the hugeness of Godspeed.

"Then there was a second wave, a bigger one, mostly centering on Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene. The latter was more of a firsthand experience for us, of course. I think it's a coincidence that these bands were Canadian. Perhaps the scene was perceived to exist partly because focus had shifted there due to these bands. It was a timing thing."

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The quiet/ loud dynamics of post-rock have become cliché over the past several years to the point where it's often more admirable if a band avoids it. Do Make Say Think certainly employs this drama, but in a way where it's not so overbearing and obvious. This is yet another of the band's strengths. The quietly building passages of development leading to big epic surges of release and climax are inherent in the genre - but you could say the same thing about most media. Films and books require tension-building and release just as much.

"We feel the same, that's it's become very cliché to keep doing the loud/ soft, loud /soft," says Benchetrit. "So we made an effort not to be so typical on the new record, but that goes back to not wanting to repeat our own selves. But there's nothing like that feeling when everyone's hitting the crescendo together - that's powerful and I'll always enjoy that. The idea really is to figure out a way to achieve that epic sense without resorting to the same tricks. We wanted the big surge without simply making the guitar get louder."

The band has come a long way since its early days. As Do Make Say Think's vision has clarified, so has the live show. One could debate the merits of seeing a one-time-only performance, a personal experience versus reproductions of album tracks. But when a band's albums are this explosively beautiful, with such a inimitable grasp of composition, it's really no question after all.

Michael Wehunt

WHO: Do Make Say Think, Ham1
WHERE: 40 Watt Club
WHEN: Friday, September 21
HOW MUCH: $10 (advance), $12 (door)