Explosions in the sky: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (Temporary Residence)

It has been three years since their last album and so i was expectantly excited about this album. Having had two wonderful experiences with long established bands moving forward in new directions fantastically with their albums this year (Grails & Mogwai - i've just realised that i didnt write about the Mogwai album, will get to that soon) i was hoping that EITS would make it a trio.

Well......they didn't.

EITS have gone away and come back with pretty much the same sound that they left us with. On one sense, this is no bad thing - EITS are a great band, with a great sound, and this album is very very good. But on the other sense, it's a bit of a let down - i wanted to hear something different, some sort of expansion, a sign that they haven't been treading water for the last 3 years. On looking for signs of where any movement has occurred, i have found isolated moments where they don't do what i expected of them - the part in 'Human Qualities' for instance, where it all drops down and doesn't immediately go BANG! (as expected) but goes into a quasi-ambient interlude before drifting back in with electronic drums and a very pleasant bass line; but generally it is a case of more of the same. The loud bits aren't quite as loud as before and the quiet bits are quite so near-silence, they are existing in the post rock purgatory  - which, i suppose, is a sort of new direction (but i only noticed that because i was searching for it, it's not that different to the mood of their last album).

This album looks like the one to push EITS into the limelight more and give them access to a new fanbase and so i wish them well in their future, but fear that this will also push them further into a corner whereby they've next got to please the new legions of listeners who will expect more of the same next time - as this will be the first time they have encountered the band.

What a whingeing, curmudgeonly old bastard i am - i actually really like this album but i spend my time moaning that they upset my notion of how I feel they should be progressing, instead of actually concentrating on how good it is. Or how utterly ridiculous the packaging is.

And i mean this in a good way. If you haven't already seen it then this is how the sleeve (literally) unfolds:
You have a nice slipcase, from which you extract the sleeve. The sleeve then folds out in 4 directions (a quad-gatefold to be precise) so appears to be a cross. In these four openings are 2 slabs of coloured 180gm vinyl - each in it's own sleeve that has been artfully created to look like, errrr, a plain white inner sleeve (albeit stained and creased), a postcard with the details on, and a huge poster of a garden. The trick is to fold the four edges of the sleeve up so that you have a cube shape - the outside of the sides are painted to resemble the inside of a house (the inside of the cube now resembles the inside of a house) and then place this on the poster to look like a house, in a garden.

All of which has nothing to do with the music contained therein, as far as i can see. But is an interesting talking point for dinner parties and other social gatherings.