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Zero 7
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
Yanqui U.X.O.
EMAILPRINTby godspeed you black emperor!
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 16 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 18 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Kranky / Constellation
Release Date: 04 November 2002
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Indie, Rock, Experimental, Instrumental
Summary
Slightly (and confusingly) changing their name to Godspeed You! Black Emperor for this outing, the Canadian instrumental band recorded these 5 tracks (clocking in at 75 minutes) with Steve Albini as a follow-up to their extremely well-received 2000 effort 'Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven.'
Also By This Artist: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
Also On The Web: GYBE info @ Brainwashed
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Delusions of Adequacy
Lift Your Skinny Fists… told a story, included more extremes in volume and emotion, and added vocal samples. Yanqui, thus, is more subtle, more restrained. Yet it's also more moody, more cerebral, more intense.
Read Full Review >All Music Guide
The band is making the finest music in the history of its collective.
Read Full Review >Dusted Magazine
While most of Slow Riot and at least parts of Skinny Fists shine through from a distance, much of what makes this album great is its painstaking detail.
Read Full Review >Mojo
Sits to the right of the likes of Philip Glass and Glenn Branca while outdoing the experimentalism of either Radiohead or Sigur Ros. [Jan 2003, p.98]
Blender
Yanqui U.X.O.'s five long tracks unfold in distinct movements, like symphonic '70s prog, but with rawer, emotional atmospherics. [#13, p.93]
Splendid
The band should be proud of Yanqui U.X.O. -- it proves that they're not hopelessly married to the fine-print details of their formula, and that they can still wring fresh ideas from familiar territory.
Read Full Review >Uncut
Innovations are few.... Still, when these nocturnes, crescendos and intimations of apocalypse remain so musically rich and emotionally powerful, it seems churlish to demand more. [Dec 2002, p.130]
The Wire
More substantial, positive and dynamic. [#225, p.58]
Stylus Magazine
What remains is a sometimes cold, sometimes confusing collection of epics that are more intricate than anything GYBE have ever created.
Read Full Review >Playlouder
Yes, of course it's a touch on the pretentious-sounding side, and it's also one of the most remorselessly miserable records of the decade so far, but none of this should discourage you from embracing it wholly.
Read Full Review >Spin
Verbal sound bites once provided subtext for Godspeed's cinematic symphonies. But on Yanqui, those voices have fallen silent, and there's too much barren drift. [March 2003, p.120]
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Stripped of some of Godspeed's hallmarks, including its creepy spoken-word samples and propensity for building to an overbearingly climactic full-on pummel, the disc's power lies more in its subdued shading and slow, methodical builds.
Read Full Review >Q Magazine
The usual barrage of angry cello instrumentals. [Dec 2002, p.103]
Neumu.net
Yanqui U.X.O. is the work of a band that has finally become confident in its popularity and influence.
Read Full Review >Pitchfork
The tracks on Yanqui are content to continue building to bored, satiated endings we can see coming 20 minutes in advance.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 8.3 (out of 10) based on 18 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jon L gave it a10:
It doesn't show the balls-out part of Godspeed, like their first two albums, but it shows them in the mode of craftsmen. This doesn't mean the album sounds safe and comfortable, though, far from it. If anything, it feels kind of like a continuation of the last passages of "Antennas To Heaven" in a more rock form, but with the unsettling feelings of old gloom long since forgotten with a hint of wistful twilight in some sections nonetheless. The group is as martial and rousing as ever, and the album is nearly as haunting as the most autumnal moments of "Lift Your Skinny Fists...", but perhaps this will fit as the final statement from the band, as I truly can't see where they can grow from here. They have certainly left three essential albums full of uncanny passion and dread like no band before or since them has replicated, and that is more of an achievement than prolific composing.
Mitch M gave it a10:
Great album. Their best hands down.
H Tam gave it a10:
Among the greatest music ever recorded. Those into common music won't get it, but it's a post-rock masterpiece. Also it's all instrumental, which already filters out the mainstream listeners.
Ben D gave it a9:
while i would have liked to hear the voice sample and explosions of noise from Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven, i still find Yanqui U.X.O. to be a very exciting listen. Overall there is more actual music and less of the ambient noise passages from skinny fists. I would highly recommend motherfucker=redeemer. This track could just possibly be the future of the band.
Keith H gave it a9:
I have only just found this band via Aural Moon; stunning, ethereal, challenging. Loved Motherfucker=Redeemer.
Paul B gave it an8:
Perhaps Albini should have been expected to do it, but UXO is stripped down, and replete with new melodic ideas. Infitiny, Slow Riot, and Skinny Fists were all triumphs, and UXO surely deserves a plac alongside these records as such. However, having seen them live during this period, I have to say that this record sounds so different from their prior work. The reason I feel this is, based on their in-show visuals of anti-war protests, I have something to attach to their previously impenetrable, but powerful, emotional vistas. The purveyors of the self-proclaimed "saddest form of rock and roll" have drawn out the development on this record, sharpened to peaks, and then force all the survivors to tread seeminly endless plateaus of resigned defeat. The album closer, the second half of Motherfucker=Redeemer, however, hints at optimism: this is the one piece on this record that ends as its growing, that doesn't settle. Perhaps GSYBE have not given up hope after all. Essential listening.
D B gave it a 7:
I cannot with any kind of self integrity, rate this any higher. While they did make a good album to say this is better or even as good as their previous works would be complete bullocks. There is one thing missing through out this entire album and that is the small vessel of hope swimming in their sea of sorrow. While this album goe in a different direction, (which is always good) it is not nearly as experimental as "Lift Your Skinny Fingers..." or others. It's the smeared sounds and haunting arrangement that make them one of the best ensembles in the history of music. Which is the very thing that never materializes in this effort.
