Explosions In The Sky - 'All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone' (Bella Union) Released 26/02/07

Before starting work on their new album, Explosions In The Sky found themselves wedged between the CD re-release of long-deleted debut album ‘How Strange, Innocence’ (previously only available on vinyl, the record’s naïve beauty pulls it beyond mere curio status) and their work on Billy Bob Thornton film ‘Friday Night Lights’ (a surprisingly mainstream undertaking that nevertheless apparently made the band “realise that they wanted to avoid the trap of simply churning out a new album every year”). On the one hand reflection, on the other hand signs of a creative rejuvenation.

The result of this division, ‘All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone’, unsurprisingly occupies the middle, though emphatically not the straight and narrow. Inviting contemplation of the most intense kind, whilst remaining stirringly cinematic (the soundtrack to a film of unrequited love, starring a pouting Scarlett Johansson perhaps), the title of E.I.T.S’s fourth album only hints at the sense of isolation and loss contained within.

Although not strictly a live album, there’s such a breadth to their sound and an alchemy within the band, that one yearns to see them in a venue full of hushed acolytes, the devoted few all huddled together waiting to each experience their own personal revelation. Even something as nuanced as the moment in opener ‘The Birth And Death Of The Day’, when six minutes in the climatic drums suddenly give way to a guitar line so fine that it’s barely there, would be enough to send most people of sane taste into fits of rapture.